


Book IV: Avi Dragon

by Draganonymous



Series: Avi's Angel [4]
Category: Pentatonix
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Shapeshifting, Slow Burn, dragon - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2019-08-26 07:02:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 46,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16676854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draganonymous/pseuds/Draganonymous
Summary: Avi's mother said he could become a dragon; like his Angel, like his children. Now that he sort of had Angel back, would he be able to make the change? Or would his career get in the way?





	1. The Forbidden Room

Angel reared up and snatched his hand faster than he could react. The world went grey and fuzzy, the kind that meant he couldn’t breathe. He tried to focus on how quickly it passed, but this time, he could’ve taken five good breaths.  
   Before he could panic, they appeared in a hospital room. On the bed before him lay the woman he remembered, shrunken and pale. Her hair, once a lustrous bronze, had faded to the color of dry wheat.  
   “ _This_ is what you pine for?” Angel asked, incredulous.  
   He looked at her like the alien she’d become. _“Yes!”_  
   Angel shrugged, in the way that was familiar, yet bittersweet. “Last chance to change your mind.”  
   The bed was by the window. Somehow, that made it even more sad. They stood where the second bed would be, if she had a roommate. She didn't; perhaps because there weren't any other female coma patients, or because her roommate had just passed away. She looked lonely, which didn't make sense, but that was the impression that stuck with him.  
   He didn't notice that he was fully clothed, either. Well, he was wearing jeans and shoes, anyway. He still wore his nightshirt over them.  
   Angel's claws reached for her “human shell”, as she’d called it.  
   He remembered her words, then, from what felt like years ago: “If _she_ does not die, _I_ do not live!”  
   “Wait!”  
   Angel paused, inches from touching the shoulder that once belonged to her.  
   The faltering beep of the heart monitor suddenly flattened into one long, shrill death note.  
   Angel cocked one brow ridge at him. "Have you changed your mind?"  
   “She… she's supposed to die, to become… you,” he choked.  
   “So she has. Her heart has stopped. What happens next is up to you.” She watched him, raptorial gaze impassive.  
   He listened to flatline, weighing the risks, as long as he could stand it--which was all of three seconds. In the end, he couldn't stand to lose the last shred of her humanity. He didn't want to be left alone with this unfeeling beast. He ground out one reluctant word: "Yes!"  
   Her right paw touched the thinly covered shoulder, eyes glowing green. The green glow vanished instantly in a grey mist. The heartbeat didn’t start again, like he thought it would. Her dragon eyes went wide as her paw disappeared inside the bony shoulder of her former vessel.  
   Slowly, inexorably, her roughly human-sized body was sucked backwards, _into_ the body on the bed. Her paw disappeared, then her foreleg up to the elbow. An invisible force tugged her wings up and inside the unmoving chest. Her legs were magnetized to the limbs on the mattress. The blankets and gown were no impediment to the merging of bodies.  
   Avi tried to step in, to intervene, but something held him back.  
“Let me _go_ Ga--”  
   He couldn't finish, of course. Angelic Restrictions closed his throat before he could utter the Archangel's name.  
   The bodies on the bed arched up off the mattress as the two creatures fused into one, in agonizing slow motion, though the human face was still as death. The bed jangled discordantly, echoing his tightly-strung nerves.  
   “If you touch them, they die--along with a sizable chunk of the town,” Gabriel said, praying that the boy would heed the command, if not the words.  
   Avi stopped straining at his invisible bonds, though he’d begun openly weeping.  
   "Can you hear me now?" he asked, surprised.  
   Avi nodded jerkily, focused on his Angel, instead of the Archangel behind him.  
   "Good."  
   “Help her,” Avi whispered, without much hope.  
   Her spine was bowed in a portrait of agony. Angel slowly sank into her former body, face frozen in a horrified mask. Neither aspect of Angel made a sound, which was eerie. Both faces now wore the same lurid blend of shock, horror, and the stillness of a coma.  
   “There is no reason to intervene.”  
   “She's in pain, isn't she?” His voice was thick with the emotions that his Angels couldn’t express.  
   “Yes, but she will not remember.”  
   Avi huffed what might have been a laugh.“Thanks for that. Never thought I'd thank you for doing that, but--”  
   “I will not have to.”  
   “What?” He almost turned toward the Archangel, but he was riveted on the macabre tableau before his eyes. She said he'd never see her again, and regret was mixed with the fear on his face. _What have I done?_ he agonized.  
   “She is in a coma so deep that not even this will wake her. The only one who would remember…” Gabriel trailed off, uncertain how to address the fading dragon in the room.   
   Though Gabriel didn’t finish, he knew what he was going to say. The cold Angel was dying. If he’d known this would happen… He still would have done it, and the knowledge wrung more tears from him. He cried for both woman and dragon.  
   “I'm glad she won't remember this. Don't wipe my memory, either. I mean it. I want to remember what this cost us.” He sniffed, but left the tears where they were.  
   “She will remember nothing.”  
   The body on the bed convulsed twice, as though she were having a seizure.  
   “Do you have to make it sound so ominous?”  
   There was no reply. He turned, but he didn't see Gabriel. “Of course. Never one for the messy bits.”  
   Gabriel stared back at him, mildly curious why he could be heard, but not seen. He didn't dispute the assumption that he always left, because he was often forced to. This once, he was allowed to witness the consequences of his actions. If it hurt Avi to see the transformation, it tore Gabriel to shreds. He'd seen his friend broken thrice now, once at his own hands, and it didn't sit well with him. _I_ _hope His master plan is worth all of this,_ he thought with uncharacteristic venom. It was monumentally difficult to trust their Father in this.  
   While Avi's head was turned, translucent wings shot out from the awkwardly curved spine. A sinuous shape briefly appeared under the sheet, as wings and tail lowered the unconscious woman gently to the bed, wings folding into her back. Gabriel Saw the tail pop, slide up into her newly hollow tailbone. Her heels slid down the mattress, the grippy bottoms of her socks scraping the sheet with the slow-motion collapse.   
   Avriel turned in time to see her slump back to the mattress, one being again. He rushed the two steps to her side, and Gabriel let him. The process was complete. His punishment would begin in earnest, soon.  
   Avi touched her face, afraid she would be cold, despite the steady beep on the monitor. She looked as dead as she had been, moments ago. He was relieved to find it warm to the touch.  
   Her eyes fluttered open after a few seconds of contact. Her eyes stared at nothing, bleary and cloudy.  
   A new alarm sounded, loud and screechy. Her face contorted at the intrusion, but the movement was sluggish.  
   He stared down at her in wonder. “ _That_ didn't wake you up, but a touch on the cheek did?” He chuckled tightly. “I don't think I'll ever understand you.” He impulsively kissed hoer forehead, lingered there because it was skin. Real, proper skin. Not an energy field, or scales. Human skin that felt familiar, yet unfamiliar. Tears trickled down to join the rest in his beard, then became a torrent as he collapsed to the bed, clutching her to his chest and rocking as best he could, with all the tubes and cords.  
   A nurse came in response to the alarm, saw him rocking and crying.  
   “So she's finally gone, then? Her sister will be sad, but she was here so long--”  
   Avi registered the fact that he had company, turned around. His face was tear-stained, but radiant.  
   The nurse hustled over to other side of the bed, saw Angel’s open eyes. She turned off the alarm with a smile. “Well, I'll be. She pulled through, after all!” She gave Avi a speculating look. “Maybe she was just waiting for her prince to wake her up.”  
   The woman on the bed shoved at Avi weakly. He reacted like she'd punched him. “Sorry, sorry, are you okay? Too much?”  
   She was blushing, and refused to look at him. One hand reached up to touch the tubes in her mouth and nose, eyes still not quite focused. Avi stopped her hand, held it as long as she let him.  
   She took her hand back, signed at the nurse for water. Her hand didn't quite touch her chin, with the tubes in the way, but he knew what she was trying to say.  
   The nurse, on the other hand, didn't understand. She glanced over from the computer, but it didn’t register that Angel was using sign language.  
   Avi chuckled. “You can't have water yet. You've got a tube in your throat.” He ruffled her hair playfully. She didn’t have earflaps anymore, and her hair was a bit greasy, but he was so happy to see her whole again that he didn’t care.  
   Her eyes widened. The shadows under her eyes appeared deeper, the blush brighter.  
   “Not kid,” she scolded vaguely, and without much heat. Her index finger wobbled on the gastric tube. She frowned at it, cross-eyed, as though wondering why she couldn’t put her finger under her nose. Her knuckles were pink from scraping both tubes, because it hadn’t quite registered that they were there.  
   He tried not to laugh at her expression. "I know. I was just... never mind, we'll figure it out later." To the nurse, he asked "When are they going to take the tubes out?"  
   “I have to consult her doctor first, make sure her airway is stable.” The nurse left to page the doctor on call.  
   Then he was alone with Angel for the first time in months. It dawned on them at about the same time. Both felt awkward, though for different reasons. Neither knew where to look, or what to say.  
   “So…” He said, at length. “This is where you've been the whole time... I'm sorry, Angel. I'd have come sooner, if I could've.”  
   The pale woman in the bed, whose blush had yet to fade, looked confused. “Beautiful word for woman you met today,” she signed. Her wide eyes weren't quite focused yet. It gave her wan face a fragile, otherworldly look that was almost beautiful.  
   He blanched. "Aw man, not _again!"_ He groaned and stared up at the ceiling for a long moment. His Adam’s apple bobbed once.  
   He searched her face, looking for some sign of recognition. He cupped her face gently. " _Please_ tell me you know who I am," he begged.  
   She paled under the blush, eyes misted. Her eyes veered away. She scoffed as best she could with tubes. Immediately, she struggled to avoid coughing. Between the angle of her head, and the sound she tried to make, her throat objected. His hands jerked back, unsure how to help her.  
   “Everyone knows you.” Her hands trembled with the effort of signing. He sat gingerly on the edge of her bed, plucked one frail hand from the air. He turned it over, and there was the tattoo, in the flesh, for the first time. He traced the curve of the bass clef with one long, tapered finger. She shivered, tried to pull away.  
   “I know it's you,” he said, looking into those achingly familiar eyes, “even if you don't know it yet.”  
   She turned her head as far away as she could with tubing, which wasn’t far. She slid her small hand from his grasp to sign. “I should know you believe soul same,” she signed.  
   It took him a minute to decipher the awkward, halting signs. Angel had taught him the sign for “soul” only because he asked her to. _Is she trying to say “soul mate”?_ He stopped, thought a while.  
   “I don't know if I do. We weren't exactly given a choice in the matter.”  
   She creaked back to look at him; the pillow squeaked faintly. Her face was puzzled yet mocking. “Everyone pick life they want. Nobody make me do things I don't want.” Her face contorted on the word “make”. “All my life, people try.” Her hands slapped together with emphasis on the word "all". Her knuckles had gone a darker shade of pink from signing around the ridged tubing, but she hadn’t noticed yet.  
   _Oh boy, this isn't going to go down well,_ he thought.  
   “I don't know if it helps, but your soul is your own. As for everything else…” His eyes were full of apology as he pinched his own arm, hard. Her arm twitched, and she glared at him.  
   “Coincidence,” she fingerspelled.  
   “Okay, fine. I'll turn around, and you pinch something. I'll tell you what it was.”  
   He turned around on the side of the bed, arms crossed. She thought for a moment, then pinched his back.  
   “Ow! That's not what I meant!”  
   He turned back and saw her eyes alight with mischief. Hope sparked to life in his heart. He took a couple of steps away and waited again, back turned.  
   She pinched her own breast, feeling puckish.  
   He whirled around, shocked, clasping one of his well-developed pecs.  
    She blushed. Then it hit her that he was telling the truth. Eyes wide, she signed “You _felt_ that?” Her middle finger audibly scraped the thin hospital gown when she signed “feel”. He tried not to notice when she had to push the shoulder back up.  
   He nodded, watching her face.  
   If her mouth hadn't been occupied by a tube, and the tape didn't limit its mobility, he got the impression she would be scowling. Her jaw tried to jut out, but it triggered a coughing fit. With a tube down her throat.  
   Avi lunged for the call button. He didn't have time to cringe. The nurse heard the horrible, gagging sound as she was coming in, thereby making the call button redundant.  
   “Sounds like the order came in none too soon,” she said calmly. She gently removed the tape, helped by Angel’s valiant attempts to stop coughing. Her cheeks quivered, breath wheezed in a husky “hoo” sound, eyes watering (which helped loosen the adhesive slightly).  
   “He said if you have trouble again, we'll try a mask, or nasal cannula. You've been intubated too many times already, and he's worried about tracheal collapse. Are you sure you want this out now, or do you want to wait? I can tape it better if you want to wait.”  
   Angel signed “out” so forcefully she nearly smacked the nurse. She adjusted the O2 monitor on her finger without seeming to notice.  
   She turned to Avi. “I'm guessing she wants it out?”  
   “Emphatically,” he said dryly.  
   “I know what do. Say when,” she signed. Avi translated for the nurse.  
   “Okay, that's the last of the tape. Let me unhook you first. Good. On three?”  
   Angel couldn't nod, so she signed “yes”.  
   “I know that one,” the nurse said. She counted to three, and Angel blew as hard as she could. It didn't sound like much. The nurse chanted “blow, blow, blow!” and a paltry stream of air hissed through the hose end.  
   “If you can't blow it out, I'll have to leave it in,” the nurse warned.  
   Angel inhaled another shaky breath through the nostril that didn’t have a tube down it, swallowed visibly, and blew for all she was worth, curling forward with the monumental effort.  
   The tubes made a sickening sound when they came out, sort of like stepping in sopping wet mud. Angel coughed when it was out, nearly retching. The nurse had removed both tubes at once, so her nose was running into her lap.  
   “Breathe,” the nurse coaxed. “You have to show me you can breathe on your own.”  
   Avi rubbed her bare back, trying to help however he could. The awful sounds she was making tore at his heart, because in a way, _he'd_ done this to her.  
   She gasped, shuddered, with the effort to draw her first breath; drool hanging from her lower lip, and snot dangling from her nose. Her chest convulsed at the sensation of unfettered intake.  
   He worried she'd never be able to breathe on her own. He stroked her braided hair, tangled all to Hell and back, murmured encouragement.  
   Much to his surprise, she squeezed her eyes shut and lay back, effectively dislodging his hand.  
   She lay there, eschewing his help, struggling for that first oh-so-important draught of air. Her wide nostrils flared, despite the gunk from the NG tube, and her chest quaked, but by dammit, she _did_ it! Slowly, much too slow for his comfort, the quaking stilled; gasps and gulps became regular breaths. In through the nose (which he wiped for her), out through the mouth. The exhales nearly broke his heart. “Hoo-oo-ooo,” with fits and starts. Sometimes he could hear a cough trying to sneak in, but she fought it off.  
   His own words came back to him: _she was a real scrapper. You'd have liked her._  
   The nurse monitored her oxygen through the entire ordeal. When she was breathing in a ragged, regular pattern, she had Angel blow her nose thoroughly. Then she slipped the nasal cannula under her nose.  
   Angel grimaced, but it was _far_ preferable to the tube!  
   Her eyes opened at last. No longer a murky grey, they were a clear, steady slate.  
   “Thank you,” she signed to the nurse.  
   “I know that one, too. You're welcome. Would you like anything for pain?”  
   Angel made a face and shook her head. Even the small movement made her wince and clutch her throat.  
   “Don’t want talk now,” she signed with shaky hands.  
   “No rush, Angel. Whenever you feel up to it.”  
   Knowing the nurse wouldn't understand, she scowled as she signed words that pierced the joy of seeing her breathing evenly:  
   “Can you not call me Angel? We not sweethearts. You don’t know me.”  
   Not looking at the other woman, he signed back “That’s what I call you. Angel your nickname. You not remember?”  
   He still hadn’t been taught to make faces when signing, so she merely agreed with what she read as a statement, not a question.  
   “Correct”, she signed with a weary tap of her fists, index fingers extended.  
   He dropped into the chair by her bed, deflated. He almost didn’t see her hands moving.  
   “You not need say ‘call me’ and ‘nickname’. Same sign.”  
   His jaw jutted forward. His hands slashed through the air with more force than they ever had: “You tell me you don’t remember last 7 months, and before I can _really_ understand, you’re correcting my sign language?” His fingernail nicked his chin when he signed “really”, but the minor discomfort of his nail, and the brief snag in his beard, registered more on her face than his.  
   The nurse misunderstood when she reached for her chin. “I’ll bring you something for your throat.”  
   “No pain meds,” she signed quickly.  
   He translated, but his voice lacked emotion. “She doesn’t want anything for pain.”  
   “No, of course not. It’s just to soothe the irritation.”  
   “Cepacol?” she fingerspelled.  
   Avi couldn’t pronounce it, but he spelled it aloud when Angel signed it again, more slowly.  
   “Something like that, yes.”  
   “OK.”  
   “I know that one, too,” the nurse chuckled. She left to get the spray, and they were alone again. No Gabriel, no nurse, just… them

 


	2. Reacquaintance

Neither of them spoke until the nurse had come with the spray and left again. Avi stared at his steepled hands, spoke to them because he couldn’t look at the distaste on her face.  
   If he’d looked up just then, he wouldn’t see what he mistook for distaste. He’d have seen the same tortured expression his Angel had worn when she watched him. He didn’t, speaking instead to things that hadn’t changed in years.  
   “I just lost my dragon, and now I don’t even get my Angel in return. He said you wouldn’t remember anything, but that wasn’t what I thought he meant. I thought he was talking about the pain…”  
   She tried to interrupt, to ask what he was talking about, but he wouldn’t look up.  
   “Why…” she tried to say. Her voice, the one he knew so well, sounded like it did the day Menolly was born; torn and ragged.  
   It broke him.  
   Those lean, guitar man hands covered the face she knew so well, and he wept into them as though the world had just ended.  
   Angel, though she didn’t remember being his Angel, knew this man as well as anyone on the outside could, without being obsessive. It broke her heart to see him weep so openly. She’d broken down when he _almost_ cried in their “On My Way Home” documentary!  
   “Oh for the love of God, come _here_ if you’re going to cry,” she rasped.  
   He was too far gone to hear her. He was, however, close enough for her to hook a finger in his sleeve and pull him toward her. More accurately, she snagged his sleeve by pure luck, and let gravity pull her arm to her side. It caught him off-guard and he fell half over her, catching himself on the bed rail beside her left hip.  
   She used the proximity to grab his beard.  
   “If you’re going to break my heart, at _least_ let me give you a hug while you do so,” she growled.  
   Their faces were inches apart. Her eyes were a deep green, and tears shimmered on her lower lids. It had been so long since he’d seen those eyes, even longer since they’d held any kind of emotion besides irritation.  
   She was his Angel again, even if she didn’t remember it. She got her wish. He hugged her to him as tightly as he dared, tears falling anew on her bare shoulder. Her gown wasn’t fastened in the back, and it had slipped again, but neither noticed.  
   “Angel”, as she’d been dubbed, was torn in many different directions. She felt vulnerable, which is why she’d lashed out. There was, of course, the love that had made her the perfect vessel. She was understandably confused.  
   She didn’t know why this man, who didn’t know she existed, was in her hospital room (and how had _that_ happened?), calling her sweet names and crying all over her. She wanted to relax and enjoy the feel of his body pressed to hers, but all of the unknowns were pressing down on her equally hard. She was being pulled in several directions by forces she didn’t understand, which made her grouchy. She did not give over control of her life--or anything else--easily. Being told it had already been done, without any consent she recalled, put her on edge.  
   So she clung to the only thing she could see and touch, tears wetting the front of his nightshirt.  
   Another nurse came in to take her vitals, after a while. They didn’t spring apart like two guilty teenagers. They’d been through too much in their relatively short lives. Avi sat up on the side of her bed with a sigh of regret that was echoed in the dry throat of the woman on the bed.  
   “Water?” she signed again, faint hope lighting her eyes.  
   This nurse didn’t know sign language either.  
   “She wants to know if she can have water yet,” he translated.  
   The man slipped a new blood pressure cuff around her arm before telling them that he could check her chart. Angel made a face that said she didn’t think he’d say yes. Then the thermometer was under her tongue, and she had to behave.  
   He flipped down the keyboard to log her vitals and check her chart. “Hmm, looks like they already have you on clear liquids. You’ve been here a while, so maybe they want to get some broth down and see how it goes.”  
   He looked to her for a reply. He got an unenthusiastic “fine” that Avi had to translate.  
   When the nurse left, he asked if she disliked broth.  
   “Hospital soup... okay. Have to like. Home soup... sometimes,” she signed.  
   “Why are you signing again?” he asked, more concerned than irritated. Her ex would have been irritated, had he even bothered to learn the language.  
   She made the sign for “pain” in front of her throat.  
   “But… you were talking before,” he objected.  
   “Because _you_ wouldn’t look me. Had to say something. My heart break for you.” Her hands were still shaking, but she managed to give off a maternal scolding vibe. It might’ve had something to do with the Look she was firing at him, or the jab of her finger in his chest when she signed “you”.  
   His eyes misted, but he didn’t cry again. “Your heart was breaking for me?”  
   She nodded jerkily, then signed “yes”.  
   “This is gonna sound nuts, but that gives me... hope. Before…” He picked up her hand, needing that little bit of human contact. “I don’t know if you’ll believe anything that’s happened the past 7 months, but when you lost your memory the first time, you got all… cold, distant.” His eyes, with their faint sheen, met hers. “I’m just happy to see you feeling things again.”  
   Her short, spiky lashes swept down. She gently removed her hand to sign slowly, working through her thoughts. “When I feel a lot emotion, I… stop. Hard say with hands.” She looked out the window. “Hurts too much. Have to stop feeling everything. Only way I can… live. Don’t know how… what do with big emotion.” Then she made a sign he’d never learned.  
   “I don’t know that last sign,” he admitted. “You never taught me.”  
   Her head swung around, wobbled to a stop. “ _I_ taught you sign language?” Her hands shook more than they had been. Her eyebrows were nearly in her hairline.  
   “Yes, you did. Maybe you shouldn’t talk so much.” He captured the square palms with their gnarled fingers in his triangular, tapered hands, laced their fingers together. “You need to save your strength. After you’ve eaten, you can tell me what the last thing you remember was.”  
   She looked down at their awkwardly intertwined hands, which he was wagging side to side lazily. She’d drawn those fingers more times than she could remember, and here they were, making her insides go squiggly without doing anything remotely intimate. What was she supposed to do?  
   She’d felt like her whole life had been spent waiting for something; some big... _thing_ that she was supposed to do. Was this it?  
   She pulled a face, staring at their joined hands. _I swore I’d never devote my life to a man again,_ she thought viciously. _I_ just _got my independence. Not even for him would I have given it up. Except… I must have, right? We share pain, so there’s some sort of Thing binding us together..._ She didn’t believe in Fate. To believe in something that big, she’d have to accept that everything that had happened in her turbulent life had been planned. She loved God too much to blame Him for all of that crap. She preferred to blame the people involved, not the Being who Created them.  
   Her thoughts were so focused, so intent, that her Bonded heard them all.  
   _:It’s not Fate, my Angel. Just a bunch of marks on our bones.:_  
   Her head snapped up, and if she hadn’t been lying against a pillow, it would have flopped backward. She really needed to learn not to make sudden movements. Her eyes briefly rolled back from dizziness, but as he’d said, she was a scrapper.  
   Her wide eyes warred between bright green and brighter aqua, making them a swirl of color that was almost familiar. It seemed that her human eyes hadn’t followed the draconic pattern. If they had, she’d be trying to heal while sad, with that combination of blue and green.  
   She was picturing slashes on her femurs, and the warding Castiel gave the Winchesters, wrapped up in one confused tangle. If she hadn’t been so vulnerable, weak, and horrified, he wouldn’t have seen the images. He knew she could block him if she wanted. At least his Angel could.  
   “They don’t look like that, silly dragon.”  
   A shadow crossed her eyes when he called her that. _Someone else calls her that,_ he thought. _Which means she was a dragon before she was a dragon. Interesting._  
   She made a face at him. _:Stop rootin’ round in my head, dude. It’s rude.:_  
   He grinned down at her. Her heart skipped a beat, but he wouldn’t know that. _:I’m not. You’re just thinking very loudly. If you’d like, I can show you what’s on our bones.:_  
   She looked horrified. An image of flesh peeling away from bone flitted across their minds, and was just as quickly squelched. He turned a bit green.  
   _:Not like_ that _, geez! I meant I can show you the symbol, not the actual Marks!:_  
_:Sorry. The sign you didn’t know, the one that for some reason, **I** didn’t teach you, was ‘autism’. I can be very… literal, sometimes.:_  
   He unlaced the fingers of one hand, cupped it within his; fingers to wrist, wrist to fingers, like a hand yin/yang. _:I guess that makes sense. You can be pretty black and white sometimes:_ He lightly circled the wrist he’d freed with thumb and forefinger. Before she could stop him, or scold him, or whatever her reaction might have been, he brought the frail limb to his lips. He laid them on the tattoo that, in a way, started it all.  
   A shock zipped through her body at the contrast of the slightly prickly hair, and the warm lips, on her chilled, highly sensitized wrist. Her breath, which she'd fought so hard to regain, shuddered out of her body in an unsteady wheeze.  
   It wasn’t just _her_ pupils that shrank to pinpoints. Apparently, pain wasn’t the only thing they shared.

 


	3. Menolly

The cafeteria lady came in with her broth then, breaking the spell.  
   Angel waved at the short, older woman with a bright smile. She tried not to notice the way her skin brushed his moustache as it left his grasp.  
   “Girl, it is _so_ good to see you awake!” She set the broth on the table, which was off to the side, and hugged Angel as best she could with Avi still holding her other hand.  
   “I’ll be sure to tell Dan you’re doing better. He was awfully worried, you know.”  
   Angel smiled, but this one didn’t reach her eyes. “Please,” she signed.  
   The woman, whose name tag read Sue, looked to Avi, then Angel. Angel rubbed her throat to show that it was sore.  
   “Oh yeah, tube. Sorry, I forgot. D’you know what she said?” she asked him  
   “She said ‘please’,” he translated.  
   “Oh yeah, will do. Now, you’d better eat all of this by the time they come for the tray, you hear?”  
   Angel smiled weakly and nodded. Her hand shook when she reached for the wheeled table. Sue was quick to swing the little table into position, but the lever gave her a bit of trouble. Avi helped her, which required letting go of her other hand. Together, they got the tray where she could eat without straining too much.  
   She would have fed herself, but the spoon shook so badly that there was nothing left in it by the time it got where it needed to go.  
   Avi firmly removed it from her iron grip, rusty as it was. “You’ve been in a coma for months. Maybe take it a little slow, huh?”  
   He filled the spoon and set it to her lips. Her eyes sparked with ire, but she opened her mouth and took the spoon with a loud clack of metal on teeth.  
   Or what teeth she had. He noted with some shock that she was missing several of her teeth.  
   “Well, looks like he’s got it covered. I’ll see you tonight, ‘kay?”  
   Angel waved goodbye to Sue, glaring mutinously at her Bonded. She was daring him to comment on her infirmity.  
   He didn’t.  
   _:You told me once that this body couldn’t do what we needed,:_ he said as Sue left.  
   _:There are many things I cannot do. If you plan on sticking around, ye may’s well know that.:_  
   He spooned another mouthful, outwardly calm. _:Lay it on me.:_  
   So she did. She listed off every health condition, acronym, allergy, and missing organ she could think of. She was testing him. Only one other man had passed this test, and that was her best friend. She’d thrown everything at Dan, trying to scare him off before he got too close; just like she was doing now.   
   She’d learned early on how unlovable she was, how lucky she was to have her ex for as long as she had. So, instead of staying with someone for years and years, only to find out that they were extremely incompatible, she laid her faults at their feet right from the beginning. Better to know right off the bat, rather than waste her life with someone who was just going to wear her down, bit by bit.  
   The fact that her best friend hadn’t run away, or used her faults against her, made her appreciate him immensely. If certain real world problems hadn’t kept them apart, she might even have dated him. There was no attraction, mind you. She was just grateful to find someone who appreciated her as she was, no strings attached. He didn’t want anything out of her, he just wanted to keep company, take care of her needs when he could. Plus he had a beard.  
   Now, here was another man who wanted into her life. But this time, she _was_ attracted to him. Not just the outside, either. She liked everything she’d seen, inside and out. In fact, the reason she was so close to her best friend was because he was very much like Avriel, in so many ways.  
   To be completely honest, she was terrified.  
  _:Why are you scared?:_ he asked. He hadn’t “heard” anything but bits and pieces, and none of them made sense. The undertone of anxiety and fear colored what she had told him. Every obstacle she’d thrown at him was hurled with the force of a frightened animal.  
   She looked out the window. He set another mouthful of broth at her lips. They briefly compressed, but she needed the nourishment, and she knew it. The brief pause left a drop of broth on her lower lip. She sucked her lip in and held it there. If she’d had enough teeth, he would’ve said she was biting it. She clearly didn’t want to tell him why she was afraid.  
   Meanwhile, he was suppressing a bodily reaction to seeing the dusky droplet perched there, catching the afternoon sunlight and refracting it. Even though it was gone, the image remained.  
   She reached for the spoon, which brought him out of the minor trance. He fed her while they both thought about things they’d rather not.  
   _:I meant what I said about strong emotions, you know. I don’t know how to deal with them. I’m afraid of letting myself feel them, because they might... stop. As much as I don’t know how to handle emotions, I_ really _don’t know what to do when they… change.:_  
   The broth finished, he moved the table out of the way and took her hands in his again. There was a pressure building in the back of his head, and he was fairly certain it wasn’t Angel. He had to break the news to her now, before Menolly built up a full head of steam.  
   “There’s more.”  
   Her face twisted. _:Of course there is.:_  
   “Whatever else you believe, there is something not even you can deny. Well, _someone_ , really.”  
   Esther appeared in the hospital room, disheveled, half awake, and thoroughly confused, holding an almost six month old baby who was flailing for all she was worth toward her mother. Kapa looked equally surprised, from his perch on his aunt’s shoulders.  
   Avi let go of her hands, stood, and took the visibly upset infant from his sister. “Sorry, I didn’t know she could do that. Do you want to stay, or, uh, try the visitor’s lounge..?”  
   Menolly calmed when she was in her father’s arms, but she was still waving her chubby arms for Mama. Esther looked around, and nothing looked familiar. She glanced out the window and saw something her brother had missed: a very great lake.  
   “We’re not in Portugal anymore,” she said on a weak chuckle. Kapa flapped to the window for a peek. Angel watched him, eyes as wide as they could physically be.  
   “Minnesota,” he said, trying to restrain his daughter.  
   Esther sat in the other chair, waved him toward Angel. “You’d better let her at her mom, or she’s likely to fall on the bed.”  
   A choked sound behind him made his shoulders hunch. He turned slowly, afraid to see the expression on her face.  
   It was a mixture of disbelief, and a pain/hope blend that was so intense, it hurt to look at. She looked at her daughter with such longing that he brought her the baby immediately.  
   Menolly would have thrown herself bodily at her mother, but her father was strong enough to enforce restraint. “No, sweetness, be gentle. Mama’s hurt.”  
   He was watching the baby, to make sure she didn’t hurt her mother, so he missed the intensified emotion that contorted her face. Esther didn’t.  
   Menolly didn’t understand the words, but she did get the caution he was subconsciously projecting. She patted her mama’s cheek, looking back at her daddy to see if she was doing good. He smiled and kissed her rosy cheek.  
   “I think you have some explaining to do,” Angel rumbled.  
   “Oh no! You sound almost as bad as the day Menolly was born! What _happened?”_ Esther rushed to the other side of the bed. She couldn’t get very close, with the table in the way, but Angel was feeling suddenly crowded, so that was a good thing. Kapa had inherited his mother’s distaste of strong emotions, so he remained on the windowsill.  
   “She was intubated.” He tried very hard to keep the meaning of his words out of his head, so the baby wouldn’t pick up on it.  
   Menolly was busy patting her mother anywhere she could reach, trying to stand on her lap but bouncing and wobbling unsteadily. “Mum mum mum mum,” she babbled.  
   Angel openly, quietly wept, torn between happiness and sorrow. She knew this child couldn’t be hers, but oh, how she _wanted_ her to be! She loved this baby instantly, no matter whose she was, besides his.  
   And her eyes showed that love in a startling way.  
   The Kaplan siblings gasped. Menolly just smiled and babbled.  
   Avi whispered for his sister to take a picture. Angel heard, but she didn’t care. She’d ask for a copy later, for her scrapbook.  
   “Can you look at the camera?” Esther asked, her voice trembling ever so slightly.  
   Angel looked up, eyes glowing a bright pink where the whites should be. Esther took a few photos, then handed the phone to her brother. He held his daughter one-armed, which he’d gotten very good at, and looked at the photo evidence. He nodded to his sister, handed the phone back, and signed “wait”.  
   Angel missed it, having returned her gaze to the amazing little girl in front of her. “What is _with_ you, sugarplum? You’re all… sparkly. Wait, blink again?”  
   Menolly was just so thrilled that Mama was talking to her sweetly, even if it sounded funny, and she looked funny, that she blinked, nice and slow. She didn’t know the word for it, but her mother pictured the action, quite without thinking about it.  
   Angel looked up at him, then. “Why are her skin and eyes like that?”  
   Avi sat on the edge of the bed, which made the baby happy, and took one of the thin hands atop the knit blanket. “She got those from her mother.”  
   Confusion crossed her face, along with fear. She held the baby a little tighter with the other hand. “I thought you said _I_ was her mother,” she rasped.  
   “You are, my little dragon.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. He valiantly tried to ignore the shiver that rippled through both of them.  
   Esther remembered, then, that she had pictures of Angel on her phone.   
   “Actually, so do I. I forgot about that day in the desert,” Avi said. He let go of her hand to pull up the image. When he found it, he turned the phone so she could see.  
   “Oh, you were so _tiny_ in this photo!” she cooed. “But… what’s she propped up with?”  
   The Kaplans’ eyes met briefly.  
   “She’s nursing. From _you,”_ he said with quiet intensity.  
   She scowled and thrust the phone back at him. “I don’t like jokes,” she nearly snarled. Her raspy voice matched the emotion running beneath it.  
   Esther showed her one from Christmas. “Here, maybe we should start smaller. You’re there, perched on the back of his neck, see?”  
   Angel squinted valiantly, but she didn’t have her glasses. Esther checked the drawers and cabinets. Avi checked the little table by her bed. He found them in the top drawer, under the phone.  
   “Okay, now look. There’s your tail, around my neck, and your wing is poking out.”  
   She squinted again, then scowled. “All I see is a necklace and somebody’s hat.”  
   Esther took her phone, swiped over a few photos to find the one she’d snuck, one of the times Angel had to stretch.  
   “There. Tell me you can’t see your wings fanned out. That’s your head, right there. Those horns are _clearly_ visible,” she asserted.  
   Angel didn’t have to squint. Even she couldn’t deny the tiny dragon on the back of his head. “She’s a very pretty dragon, but in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not nearly that small.”  
   Avi already had the picture Kevin sent him of their mock fight in the dining room queued up. “You started small, just like any newborn. Here’s what you looked like a couple of weeks later.” He didn’t tell her what to look for, this time.  
   Her head tilted, brow curled. “What am I looking at here? It looks like you’re wrestling an alligator, but… an alligator puma..? I know, that sounds weird, but I can’t tell what’s going on here.”  
   He swiped to the one where her jaw was open over his head.  
   “Wow, you survived that?”  
   He snorted. “As you probably would've said, ‘I would have been a poor Guardian if I’d wounded my Bonded human’. Besides, the pain thing goes both ways.” That wasn’t the case when the photo was taken, but that was irrelevant.   
   “‘Bonded’? Is that like Imprinting in Anne McCaffrey’s books?” She remembered the mating flights and flushed, but she valiantly ignored it in the face of the mystery at hand. She absently rubbed her aching throat.  
   “Mm, sort of. There’s telepathy, sure, but I can’t remember if they share pain too, or just… thoughts.” He trailed off awkwardly, having also just recalled the mating flights. “You do _blink_ , though. Apparently, so does Menolly.” He tweaked his daughter’s nose affectionately. “Hey, wait. _That’s_ where you got the name, isn’t it? I _knew_ it sounded familiar!”  
   Angel chuckled, but it sounded more like shifting gravel. “Why am I not surprised you’ve read her books?” _So how do I know this isn’t just some fantasy he came up with?_ she wondered. _It all sounds too good to be true._  
   He took the phone away, picked up her limp hand, and kissed the inside of her wrist. It was… awkward, experiencing that electric sensation in front of his sister. He’d forgotten about the effect he had on her sensitive wrists. _:No fantasy can conjure babies and dragons out of thin air,:_ he pointed out. _:This is real.:_  
   Her pupils had returned to normal by the time he raised his head. _:Then how do you explain her? I had a hysterectomy, if you’ll recall.:_  
   He huffed an almost-laugh. _:Yeah, that was one helluva surprise. I guess when you got turned into a dragon, He gave you a dragon’s uterus? Never really got a chance to ask.:_  
 _:He?:_  
   Avi used her old trick, looking up at the ceiling. Her eyes followed reflexively, then widened when she realized what he was saying.  
   Esther cleared her throat politely, holding out her phone with the most recent photo queued up. He held out Angel’s hand, by the wrist he still retained a light hold on. Esther put the phone into Angel’s trembling hand.  
   Her human eyes grew almost as big as her dragon eyes. Nerveless fingers dropped the phone on her knee. She unconsciously reached toward her face. Avi let go of her hand.  
   “It’s only strong emotions, but I think it’s like Pern dragons, sort of.”  
   Menolly joined in the game, patting her mother’s face again.  
   “Did they do that before? When we were… talking?” She didn’t want to say “arguing” in front of his sister or daughter.  
   He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “How would I know? I was too busy crying.”  
   Angel scowled at him.   
   Esther asked why he was crying. “They were happy tears, right?”  
   Angel’s jaw jutted out, but that prompted another coughing fit. She blindly groped for the tissues, which were thrust in her hand by one of the Kaplans. She tried not to look at the colors that stained the thin paper. She knew how flimsy they were, so she had a wad of them ready to swallow up the evidence. She knew Avi well enough to know two things: first, coughing made him cringe. It was probably out of sympathy, which meant that she’d do everything she could to spare him the grisly sight. The second thing she knew was how sensitive he could be. If he saw the debris from long intubation, he would feel bad.  
   So Angel did what she’d always done, whether or not she remembered. She spared him whenever possible. She asked for the waste basket, so she could throw the tissues away in such a manner that the contents were hidden. She took another wad of tissue to do the same with the even more disgusting contents of her nose, disposed of likewise.  
   Trying to make light of it, she said “Trust me, you do _not_ want to know what was in there.” Having just blown her nose, she thereby distracted him from the possibility that she’d coughed anything substantial up.  
   “Hand wipes?” she asked, sounding worse than before.  
   Esther was closer to the table, so she handed them over.  
   “I can’t wait ‘til I can take a proper shower,” Angel grumbled. “I feel like roadkill.” She put the cannula back in her nostrils and absently flattened her hair, which Menolly was only too happy to help her with. It had been braided at one point, but her ordeal wrecked them.  
   “Thanks, sweetness,” she rattled.  
   “Speaking of the baby, why did she teleport? Was she hungry? Wet? Do we know?” Avi asked Esther.  
   “Not a clue. She seems fine, so it was probably the usual: she woke up, neither of you were there, and she freaked. Kapa brought her to me, since your door was locked.” She aimed a Look at him that said she’d need an explanation later. “Maybe she could tell you were further away than usual, ‘cause she didn’t do this before.”  
   Angel was blushing when she told them she had a pretty good idea what the issue was. The Kaplans looked at mother and child, and it became pretty obvious what was on her mind.  
   “I hope you’ve got a bottle, ‘cause these haven’t worked in over a decade.”  
   Avi was almost as bright pink as she was, but he soldiered on. “We don’t know that. Angel sort of… merged with you, and she was nursing, so maybe..?”  
   Her brow puckered. “What do you mean she merged with me? Am _I_ Angel, or is someone else?”  
   Pain flickered through his eyes, which he tried to hide before the baby caught a whiff of it. “It’s complicated. Angel was… she was an astral projection of you, but then she got turned into a dragon--which, come to think of it, is probably how you wound up so small, at first. They didn’t have anything solid to work with, in the beginning.” He was staring at the wall over her head, lost in thought. The image of this woman, this partial stranger, arched in pain, dying or dead, flashed through his head. He visibly shook off the image, so he could continue.  
   “Anyway, she touched your shoulder. I thought she was just going to, I don’t know, absorb your memories or something. But then she fell back, into your body.” His eyes skipped down her body in the bed, as if he could see where his Angel had gone. He lingered a few moments on her feet, belatedly realizing what he’d just done.  
   He skipped directly to her face, afraid of looking like a lecher. He had to look away almost immediately, because his theory was correct.  
   His daughter was sprawled under the thin sheet, and one of Angel’s shoulders was bare above it.

 


	4. Baby Food

"Angel" couldn't believe her bleary eyes when she woke from what was apparently a long coma. At first, she hadn't seen enough to know what was going on around her. She felt a touch on her cheek, saw a vague bearded face shape in front of her, but the shriek of the alarm drowned out everything except the ringing in her ears. Then the bearded someone kissed her forehead. She thought it was her best friend. She tried to hug him when he broke down, but one arm had an IV drip, and the other was hindered by his body pressing against hers. Some sort of medication made everything fuzzy around the edges.  
   Then the nurse came in. She pushed who she thought was Dan away, to ask for water. But when he pulled away, and she saw who'd been hugging, _kissing_ , and crying all over her, she forgot about the weird pressure in her throat. She looked away, embarrassed and confused.     
   She reached toward her face, and he held her hand longer than she was comfortable with. She gently removed it to sign for water. Whatever was going on in her throat was unpleasant.  
   He told her that she had tubes in, and it made sense, but she was still pleasantly numb to everything. Everything except Avi Kaplan, sitting on the hospital bed she'd barely registered yet. He cupped her face with those long, guitar man hands, and she didn't know what to do. She wanted to weep, but she was still pretty heavily drugged. This was too much to bear, too huge to process. Why was he here? What was that look in his eyes? Who did he think she was?  
   Now, looking at the child he said was theirs, she still wasn't sure any of her questions had been answered. _At least she’s not a newborn. I don’t have to worry about embrasure,_ she thought absently.  
   Still looking out the window, he asked what embrasure was, where his sister wouldn’t hear. There was a long pause.  
   _:Mouth positioning,:_ she said. Her mental voice sounded pained. _:If either lip is tucked under, it… hurts. She knows the drill, so at least there’s only emotional scarring.:_  
   He wanted to look, badly. Even with a magnificent red dragon hatchling in the window, it couldn’t offer as beautiful a view as a mother feeding her child, but this mother didn’t remember creating said child. She saw him as a virtual stranger. He didn’t want to cause her any more discomfort than what was already facing her.  
   _:If it makes a difference, there are heart sensors everywhere. It’s not a pretty sight. In fact, I think somebody is going to come in soon, ‘cause she knocked one loose:_  
   The tendon in his neck tensed. _:Heart sensors?:_  
   She sighed, and not internally. _:Long-term coma patient, remember?:_ She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t want him thinking about death at the moment. _:How long was it, anyway?:_  
_:I don’t know, honestly. You said not to find you--the dragon you said not to come here. She’s almost six months old, though, so I hope it was less than that; otherwise, we’re going to have a problem.:_  
   She was right about a nurse coming to check on her. It was the female nurse, whose face pinched up when she saw what her patient was doing.  
   “You shouldn’t nurse so soon after,” she scolded. “You’ve barely got enough in your system for yourself, let alone a baby.”  
   Esther told her that she’d tried to get the baby to take a bottle. “Once she knew her mom was awake, she wouldn’t take it.”  
   The nurse’s brow knitted an entire blanket. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but… how old is that baby? I think we’d have noticed if she’d given birth while she was here.”  
   “It was just before she went under,” Esther ad-libbed. They didn’t know when she’d gone into a coma, so it was a rather large gamble.  
   One wide fist propped on an ample hip. “Then why haven’t I seen you three here before?”  
   “He was on tour, and I’m their manager,” Esther dug in deeper. “We were told she wasn’t getting any worse. They assured us she was getting the best care possible. She wouldn’t have wanted us to disappoint the fans, right?”  
   She looked to Angel for confirmation, praying she’d go along with her story.  
   “Heaven forbid,” she scoffed. Her gravelly voice lent the statement more doom than it merited. “Poor Kirstie doesn’t even take time off when she’s sick.” She hadn’t directly answered the question, but the nurse didn’t notice.  
   Esther released the breath she’d been holding, slowly.  
   So did her brother, who the nurse couldn’t see, because he’d gone to stare out the window, one hand absently resting on his son’s back. Being so close, yet unable to watch his child and… What was Angel to him, now? Not a Guardian, surely. She’d told him point-blank that she couldn’t protect him in her human body. _She couldn't protect them!_ He worried himself halfway to an ulcer, until the word “bloodwork” filtered into his thoughts.  
   “I’m sure everything will come back fine. I had plenty of fat stores to use up while I was out,” Angel said dryly. _:Plus whatever your Angel had in her system,:_ she added for his benefit.  
   His head dropped to the cold window. _:You **are** my Angel,:_ he rumbled. Dozens of emotions colored the short sentence.  
   The sheets shifted behind him. The sound barely registered. Her words, however, burrowed into his heart. _:Can ye not growl_ directly _into my brain when I’ve got a baby latched on? That’s not exactly a sensation I like to associate with nursing, y’know.:_  
   He turned his head, just enough to see between the nurse and Esther. There it was, the faintest tinge of violet around her irises. She closed her eyes until it passed, but he’d seen it, all the same.  
   Avi stood slowly, palms braced on the windowsill, a grin fighting to break free. He dare not turn around, for fear one or all of the women in the room would misinterpret his expression. Kapa was also looking out the window, pointedly ignoring the whole family drama.  
   Esther was trying to find out what Angel needed to do, or have done, before she was well enough to be discharged.  
   “Is there going to be physical therapy, a special diet..?” She didn’t want to say, just yet, that they were on a timetable. They would be back on tour in roughly two months, and she knew her brother wouldn’t leave her behind; not when they were traveling overseas again.  
   “Our first concern is her stomach. She has a lot of digestive issues, so we need to be sure that’s on board. Then the doctor might start her on OT, until she can get up and walk on her own. We’ve been doing passive exercises while she was in the coma, so she may not have as far to go. I would say we’d work on her core, but if she just had a baby before she went under, they might forego that part. Really, how fast she gets better is up to her.”  
   She looked at the baby pointedly. “I don’t know how much that’s going to set her back, honestly. How do you feel? Any discomfort? Lightheadedness? Tingling anywhere?”  
   Angel chuckled. “Nothing you wouldn’t expect after being in a coma. Believe me, there’s plenty of motivation to get better. Long’s they put me on a multivitamin, I don’t think she’ll be a problem. Four months is when you start weaning, anyway, so she should be almost weaned by now. Six months they nurse what, once or twice a day? It’s been a while...”  
   The nurse seemed to soften, if only a little. “She was only four weeks old when you came in? Poor thing, no wonder she latched right on. You’re lucky she didn’t get nipple confusion.”  
   He heard a tight chuckle. “Yeah, my eldest had that. Got all bunged up and had to pump.”  
   Esther proudly declared that they’d listened to her, and gotten the right nipples for the bottle. This earned her points with both the nurse and Angel.  
   "Well, I don't know what the doctor will say, but this once, I'll allow it. Mostly because I don't think the other patients would like the fuss she'd make if we took her off." She aimed her index finger at Avi, who still wasn't looking, admonished him to have baby food with them by her next feeding, _or else._  
   He nodded at the window.  
   "I'll go," Esther offered.  
   When the nurse left, she asked Avi for his wallet. "She didn't exactly wait for me to grab my purse when she pulled her little vanishing act."  
   “And it’s not like I can teleport across an ocean yet,” Kapa said. “I think they only reason I got in your hotel room was she… helped.” He hated to admit that his (currently) human sister had to help him with his first teleportation.  
   Avi reached into his back pocket for his wallet, still oblivious to his wardrobe change. Angel looked away, very aware of how tight his pants were. _It's a wonder he managed to reproduce at all, with those jeans,_ she thought at the blank television.  
   He almost dropped his debit card. Esther didn't ask questions, other than the direction of the nearest grocery store.  
   "Closest things you can walk to easily are the Whole Foods and a gas station. The options aren't great for baby food, I'm afraid," Angel apologized. "It would've been nice if she'd teleported while you were in the car, aside from, y'know, being in a hospital room. Ugh, sorry, I haven't had coffee in... months..."  
   Avi didn't know how to tell her that she couldn't have coffee, until he remembered that his mother said that human digestion was different from dragon digestion. If his mom could eat sweets as a human, why couldn't Angel have coffee?  
   Esther opted to try Whole Foods, despite Angel's objections about the price. It was more likely to have baby food than a gas station or gift shop.

 


	5. Family Ties

When Esther was gone, he perched on the chair next to the bed, unsure where to look. He knew what it looked like when Angel nursed as a dragon, but he'd never witnessed the miracle while she was human... sort of. She said that Menolly would be weaned soon, and he didn't know if the dragon uterus was inside of her, so these few precious weeks could be his last chance...  
   But, being the honorable man that he was, he couldn't ask. This woman knew him, from afar, but she didn't remember that he knew her. If it bothered her to have him fluff her hair, or hold her hand, how could he possibly ask for something so very intimate?  
   _:You ask, silly bass.:_  
   His head whipped around. Her eyes were slightly yellow round the edges, but that was the only evidence of her disquiet.  
   _:It might surprise you to know that I never got to experience the joys of motherhood fully. I suppose that's why they took me... wherever, for dragon crafting. You have a point. This might never happen again.:_  
   The hand that wasn't cradling their child lifted toward his face, fell to the sheet, along with her gaze. He snatched it up, set it against his skin, and closed his eyes, holding her trembling hand in place. Her thumb stroked tears from his cheek, while they trickled down her own. Had his eyes been open, he'd have seen the faint pink tint to the whites of her eyes.  
   She slipped her hand from his and tugged on his beard. _:If you're wantin' to see anything, she's almost done, so you might want to open your eyes.:_  
   By the time they drifted open, she'd dropped the gown around her waist. She couldn't look him in the eye, so she looked at their baby.  
   Menolly's hair was the same color her eldest child's was, when he was born. Her son's hair had lightened more than hers had, by now. Her tiny nose was slightly different, but that made sense, given their different fathers. She had his lashes, which was a blessing, and her hairline. Her jawline could have been from either of them.  
   That was because Angel had a similar facial structure to her Bonded, thanks to a familial resemblance in their respective mothers. She knew that it was merely due to their Germanic heritage, though it had been startling to discover one day. The only differences in their faces were the nose shapes (but not their length), lashes, and minor differences in hairline, eyes, and lips. There wasn't really any way to know which parent she'd inherited certain traits from, so Angel focused on those little differences.  
   While she was examining the baby, he was taking in the miracle of a mother giving her baby sustenance. The tiny lashes against pale lavender cheeks that worked to draw out the milk, the little hand on her mother's breast, the pale bronze head bent over her...  
   One lean hand reached toward his daughter's cheek, and stopped. Angel caught the motion, looked up. She shook her head, smiling.  
   _:Go ahead. I don't bite... unless you ask nicely.:_ Her lips twisted with amusement, eyes sparkling merrily, before she realized what she said and ducked her head.  
   Avi chuckled tightly. He let her off the hook, for the moment. His index finger lightly stroked his daughter's cheek, full of emotions he couldn't begin to label.  
   A hazy pink light filtered through the baby's lashes, with a faint violet glow over her face. He Felt the baby's unadulterated joy, but Angel was blocking him; with or without knowing it. If her downcast gaze hadn't given her away, he'd never know what effect seeing his finger so close to her bosom was having on her insides.  
   He knew better than to take advantage of her exposed body. On some level, she likely knew that, and trusted him. That made him feel warm inside, that she trusted a man she'd only just met--as far as she knew, anyway.  
   With that said, he couldn't resist placing a kiss on his daughter's hair. It was a fleeting thing, nowhere near her mother, but he felt a sharp jab to the loins from her direction.  
   "Sorry," he said.  
   She slapped his cheek lightly. It wasn't enough for her to feel through the link, but it startled him.  
   _:Don't mind me, and don't apologize. If you want to show your child affection, I don't care where she is, you go right ahead.:_  
   A smile spread slowly across his face. There was a hitch in her breathing, but he didn't think to attribute it to something as simple as a smile. It wouldn't occur to someone so humble that a facial expression could make a person's stomach go wobbly.  
   He tapped her cheek with his fingers, less of a slap than hers was. "Ours, silly dragon. She's ours, not just mine."  
   For some reason, her face went all stark and hollow again, and she looked away.  
   His brows curled. "What's wrong?"  
   She took her time answering. He let her, because none of her thoughts were coherent enough for a reply.  
_:Remember what I said about big emotions, 'kay? It'll... it'll take a while to get used to this.:_ She looked up when she felt his emotional response. It was... sad? Upset? Offended? She couldn't untangle it. The last thing she wanted was to make him feel... whatever that was.  
   _:I've said it wrong, haven't I?:_ Her hand reached toward his face again, stopped, again. He caught it before it could touch the sheet, held it where they both wanted it to be.  
   "I don't care where we are, if you want to touch my face, go right ahead," he said with a smile hovering round his moustache. Her lips twisted, but she didn't quite return the smile.  
   She suppressed the impish urge to ask if that only applied to his face, because she was a prude... normally.  
   "So, what's with the face? Are you sad? Mad? Anxious?" he asked.  
   _:Sad and anxious, and also happy.:_ She stared at his chin, unable to meet his gaze point-blank. _:So happy it hurts, and I'm scared. This kind of happy never lasts...:_ Her eyes welled with big, fat tears. If she wasn't on an IV drip, he'd worry that she'd get dehydrated, with all the crying they'd been doing. Her hand slipped down, tangled in the hair over his shoulder.  
   Menolly caught wind of her sadness. She started to whimper, curled up in her mother's lap. Angel couldn't bear it any more than he could. She picked up their daughter, put her over her shoulder, and made vague soothing noises as best she could, with her ravaged throat. She patted her small back, in its pink onesie, swaying a little.  
   And while she held that tiny life they’d created together, he felt her pain keenly. She couldn't hold it in any more than she could stop her heart from beating. She wanted what was in this room so much that the fear of losing it was ripping her to atoms.  
   Avi gathered his girls to his chest and rocked them, part and parcel. He set his mouth on the top of her head and pressed it into the thick, tangled hair, as though imprinting his mark on her. He was crying, she was crying, Menolly was crying. It was a wonder that no one came in to ask what was going on.  
   No one asked questions, but that doesn't mean that no one came into the room. A deep voice, choked with emotion, said "Well, I guess I don't have to braid her hair today."

 


	6. Daniel

Angel squirmed out of his grasp and pushed at his chest, simultaneously. He lifted the front of her hospital gown as best he could while she was wriggling. He wasn't exactly possessive, but she wouldn't want anyone seeing her half-naked with a man. He was trying to protect her reputation.  
   "Where have you been, ye great big pain in the arse? Come _here!"_  
   Avi turned toward the newcomer, who immediately blanched when he saw who'd been holding Angel and weeping.  
   "Daniel, don't stand there gawking, come here and give me a hug. I've been out for five whole months without hugs."  
   He sarcastically pointed out that she seemed to be getting enough hugs when he walked in.  
   "Yes, yes, we'll get to that. Don't make me ask again, 'cause my throat hurts like hell," she growled. She held out her arms imperiously, just like her daughter was wont to do. The child in question stared at the giant bear of a man uncertainly.  
   The hulking giant walked to the other side of the bed, moved the table, all with surprising grace for someone his size. Avi felt like a Munchkin again, just being near him. The big man saw the baby then, and his face fell.  
   Angel was having none of his nonsense. She lunged up and grabbed a handful of beard, yanked him down to her level. She planted a firm kiss on his surprised mouth, then pulled him into a one-armed hug.  
   That kiss didn't only surprise Daniel. Avi didn't know what to do, say, or even think. He thought she was _single_. What was he supposed to do now?  
   Angel let Dan go after a bit, but she didn't release his beard. "I take it you're the one who's been braiding my hair?"  
   He looked at Avi. She tugged his beard. "We'll get to that. Was it you that's been braiding my hair?"  
   "Yes, dear," he said, acutely uncomfortable.  
   She let go of his beard. "Good, 'cause they're horribly knotted. Think you can return the favor again?"  
   "Sorry, what do you mean, 'return the favor'?" Avi asked.  
   Angel turned toward him, her back to Daniel. She was still leaning on the pillows, but her... whoever he was should be able to work with her hair that way.  
   "When he was in hospital, I braided his hair. Kept it from getting tangled to Hell and back. Speaking of which, what'd you do, watch YouTube videos to learn how to braid?"  
   The big man chuckled, unwinding her braids. "You know me so well. Besides, I've got more than enough hair to practice with."  
   She smiled, head tilted back a bit. She looked at her Bonded that way, down her cheeks. It was somehow sultry, that expression of hers. "The hair is one of the things I like about Danny boy. That includes the beard. Then there's the deep voice. He can sing too, did you know? He's a big ol' nerd with a big ol' heart, and he seems to be happy most of the time. He likes me as I am, flaws and all."  
   Avi didn't know why she was telling him these things, with that look on her face. She stared him down, while the brush untangled the snarls in her thick, faded bronze mane, waiting for him to say something.  
   When he didn't, she yanked the rug out from under his feet. "Daniel, dearest, why do I like you so much?" She looked up at him briefly, then down at her Bonded.  
   Daniel knew what she was about. It pained him to say the words, but he loved her enough to give her this much, at least.  
   "She loves me because I'm so much like you," he said. He met Avi's gaze squarely for a moment. She reached up blindly and patted his face. The big man bent down and let her do it. Love shone on his face plainly, but not a flicker of rose tinted his Bonded dragon's gaze.  
   She waited for that fact to sink in. One brow raised. _:Do you see it now? This was my life, when whoever it was took me away. I settled for someone who has your personality, your acceptance of others, even the long hair and beard. Someone, more importantly, who was in my league._  
 _:I was lonely, and I knew...:_ Her eyes dropped to her lap. _:I knew I'd never talk to you, let alone meet you in person. So I took what he offered. But I always held him at arm's length, because something was missing. I like being with him, but there's no... spark.:_  
   Her eyes lifted as far as his chest. It was as far as she dared, while baring her soul. _:He knows, you know. He knew, early on, that if you and I met, and... hit it off, he didn't stand a chance. He's slowly dying inside, but he'll let me go. He loves me enough to want me to be happy. And knowing that is killing me, bit by bit.:_ Her lap was limned in a blue halo of misery. The baby, within the azure haze, was patting her face, trying to cheer her up, and it wasn't working.  
   It should have felt good, knowing he wouldn't have to fight for her, but it didn't. Watching the big man brush her hair, long past the point he needed to, broke his great big heart.  
   "Well, there's one thing you can do that I can't," he said, attempting levity. "I hope you'll still come to visit, 'cause I can't braid for the life of me."  
   Dan set the brush down, stayed silent for a long time while he parted her hair. "She's awake now. She doesn't need me anymore." His voice was thick with suppressed tears.  
   Angel snatched his beard faster than either man could follow. "Don't you _dare_ say that!" Dan was shocked to see the blazing blue of her eyes. "No matter _what_ he says, far's _I_ know we just met! Esther's here, too. Do you really want to leave me alone with people I've only known from the internet, just like that? Don't you _dare_ abandon me! I still need you, 'kay?"  
   She turned back round, absently patted the baby in an attempt to reassure her. Dan was stunned, but eventually, her words sank in. For the moment, at least, she still needed him.  
   "As you wish."  
   Two more tears fell on the pink onesie.

 


	7. Logistics

Dan couldn’t stay long. He got a call, and Angel’s face fell. She knew he had to leave, which was one of the reasons they’d never dated seriously. His job was just about 24 hours a day, which didn’t leave much time for her.  
   Sometime during the braiding, the baby fell asleep. Before Dan left, he convinced her to put her in the car seat. She resisted the persuasion of both men, until her best friend pointed out the logic of it.  
   “If you use up all your energy holding her when she’s asleep, you won’t have any when she’s awake.”  
   She hung her head, nodded at the tiny feet in her lap. She saw the sense of it even more clearly when she couldn’t lift Menolly into the car seat. Dan gave her an “I told you so” look on his way out the door. He knew Avi would help her, and he did.  
   “Is _that_ how to get you to do something you don’t want to?” he asked, surprised and abashed at not thinking of it himself. “Tell you _why_ it needs to be done?”  
   She reclined against the pillows with a heavy sigh. “I don’t know whether to thank or throttle him for giving away the secret,” she chuckled ruefully. “Yes, logic will usually work on me. More often than not, my reactions are in direct correlation to how much information I have to work with.” She snorted. “That’s the thing about me: I never outgrew the ‘why’ phase.”  
   Angel dropped off to sleep shortly after. She’d done exactly what Dan warned her about, and used all of her energy.  
   Avi clutched her hand, worried she might not wake this time. The steady rise and fall of her chest, the blips on the monitors, kept the fear at bay. He watched their daughter for any signs of distress, but she slept peacefully.  
   He spent the rest of the time alone thinking. Thinking, and texting. It was nighttime in Portugal, but it was afternoon on this side of the pond. He texted his parents, who were understandably confused and concerned. Not so confused that his father didn’t ask what he was going to do about his girlfriend, however.

 **I did tell you this might happen,** his dad pointed out. The text blurred on the screen for a moment.

   He looked at his sleeping angel dragons, as he saw them. Didn’t he owe it to Menolly to at least _try_ to make things work with her mother? Angel didn’t know they’d shared a bed until she’d grown too large to fit. She didn’t know about the monsters she’d fought to keep him alive. There was no Geas forcing her to tolerate him (that he knew of), to spend every moment of every day in his presence. In a way, it was a fresh start. Odd, that they should only truly meet after having fourteen children together…  
   He scrubbed his face, torn between laughing and crying.

 **I'll tell my gf when we return to CA.**  
**Tell her what?** His dad asked.  
**That I’m going to try to make this work.**  
**How?** This was from his mother, in the group text. **She thinks Angel is a dragon.**

   He thought for a while, but no answers came to mind.

 **I’ll ask the kids if there’s anything they can think of. Maybe there’s some dragon mind trick to make her forget that part?**  
**THAT is an angel trick.** He could almost hear the ice in his mother’s text.  
**Well, I can’t think of anything, can you? I’m not going to pick a fight with her just to break up. It’s not her fault.**  
   His dad suggested they table the issue for now. **You have until you return home to think of something. Ask your sister for ideas.**  
**That’s not a lot of time, but I’ll try. Thanks for… I don’t know, being yourselves. I love you guys.**

   His eyes were burning when he put his phone away. He’d shed too many tears today. He blinked at the ceiling, absently stroking the leathery hand he still held. A cafeteria lady came in to get the tray, though it wasn’t Sue. He nodded a greeting, lost in thought as he was. He barely acknowledged the nurse that came to take her vitals, though he kept the man in his periphery. Without Angel’s dragon form, they were equally vulnerable. Every person that entered her room while she was there was subjected to discreet scrutiny.  
   _Good, boy. Don’t drop your guard for a moment,_ Samandriel thought. _We can only watch over you for so long. Soon, you’ll have to fend for yourselves._  
   He typed the numbers into the computer, walked from the room, and left his temporary host sitting in the break room.

 


	8. Nature vs Nurture

Angel woke slowly, reluctantly. She didn’t know how long had passed, but there was a jar of baby food on the rolling table, and Esther was napping in the convertible recliner. Avi was where he’d been when she dozed off, head to chest. He hadn’t let go of her hand, even in slumber.  
   She looked in the car seat, head still lounging on the pillow, and a pair of bright blue eyes stared back at her. _It wasn’t a dream, then._  
   Not wanting to disturb either Kaplan, she gently removed her hand from his lax grip and lifted the baby from the carrier. There didn’t seem to be a spoon, but she could use her fingers if it came down to it. She had trouble holding a spoon right now, anyway.  
   The problem was, she also couldn’t get the jar open. She didn’t want to wake anyone, but the baby was hungry. Liquids didn’t keep a six month old baby satiated for long.  
   Fortunately, a nurse came in with something for her to drink. She pulled a face when she saw the bone broth packet, but vowed to drink it, and the glass of water, as long as the nurse opened the packet, and the jar. He gave her a Look, but she couldn’t even open the packet. She tried.  
   The nurse mixed the bone broth while she scooped a spoonful of carrot baby food out with her finger. He didn’t leave until she took a hearty swallow of the nasty stuff.  
   Angel alternated sips of broth with globs of baby food. Menolly thought it a wonderful game. When her mother forgot to take a sip, she’d turn her head from the food until Mama took her medicine.  
   “You’re one smart cookie, you know that?” Angel whispered.  
   Menolly beamed up at her, happily slurping her food, now that it was her turn. Angel impulsively kissed her button nose. She knew Esther had woken up enough to be recording on her phone, but she didn’t care. She was in heaven. She didn’t know whether she was taking photos, videos, or both, nor how long she aimed her phone at them. She registered the act, then dismissed everything from her mind except her daughter’s cherubic face.  
   _Hmm, she kind of is a cherub, when you think about it. Not literally, but the lay impression of cherubim is baby angels, and she’s Angel’s baby. Whoever, or whatever Angel is…_  
_:I keep telling you that_ you’re _Angel,:_ a weary voice said in her head.  
  _:Well, I still don’t understand_ how. _Remember what Dan taught you, boyo. If I don’t understand something, I’ll pick it apart until I do. It’s not necessarily that I don’t believe you...:_  
   He stirred in the chair, then; a slow stretch that did things to her insides before he opened red, bleary eyes. A different pang caught her heart at the sight of him.  
   “I gather you’d like to hear the story, then.”  
   She nodded, Menolly sucking on her index finger. He stuck a finger in the jar and fed their daughter a few bites, despite her attempts to turn her head. Angel dutifully sipped her broth when it was her “turn”, to expedite the process.  
   When the baby was full, he told her what they knew. The parts that Esther didn’t know were added via telepathy. She asked questions in whichever medium he was using to communicate, making a fuss over the baby throughout the conversation.  
   She pointed out, when she sensed a bit of frustration, that she didn’t want the baby to catch the drift of conversation. She was distracting the baby as much as she could, which made so much sense he felt silly for not thinking of it.  
   Esther, of course, took occasional photos. She couldn’t take video without recording classified information, but it was a moment they were sure to want to remember.  
   When they’d relayed what they knew, the Kaplans waited for her to fill in the blanks.  
   Angel looked up, met their eyes one at a time. “Sorry, but last thing I remember is going to sleep,” she signed.  
   “That’s it? No angel in your bedroom? The living room?” he asked.  
   “No.” Her hands still trembled. The broth helped, as did the spray, but there had been something down her throat for five months, and little in the way of nutrition. When the doctor was in earlier, he told her that she would be coughing up “lovely colors”, as she put it, for a couple of days. The pain and hoarseness, he said, would likely last one to two weeks.  
   “My luck, 2 weeks,” she signed. “Usually how my body works.”  
   “Well, at least you have sign language, and a partner who understands it,” the nice man said, clapping Avi on the back.  
   He didn’t hear Kapa snort, but he did see the blush on her cheeks, her inability to look at Avi. He’d seen Daniel braiding her hair once or twice while she was unconscious, and decided he didn’t want to get into the middle of this domestic situation. He’d left soon after, leaving the little family to piece together what they could of the last couple of years.  
   Kapaneus spoke into the silence, told them that his siblings were waking up.  
   “Ooh, there are _more_ of you?” Angel asked, eyes alight. They hadn’t left the others out of the story, but it hadn’t registered that he was one of the hatchlings they’d mentioned. “Are they all as beautiful as you? Oh, don’t make that face! I keep telling my cat that boys can be pretty.”  
   She gazed at him wistfully, but she’d gotten a standoffish vibe from him. She was afraid to ask if she could inspect him more closely. After all, he was the first dragon she’d seen, to her knowledge.  
   She wouldn’t ask, but Avi did.  
   “Here, son, let your mother get a good look at you.” He was waving Kapa over to the bed, so he missed the dumbfounded look on her face.  
   “Wait, you’re my _son?_ How… You said they were eggs. I thought… Wow, _really?”_ She was so surprised she forgot to save her poor, ravaged throat. Her eyes sparkled with wonder so pure that even her son couldn’t deny her.  
   In fact, it inspired him to show off a bit. His aunt could have walked closer, but what fun was that? Besides, she was tired. Wouldn’t he be a good Bonded dragon if he made it unnecessary for her to get up at all?  
   He stood straighter, wings stretched high for a moment that she would never forget. His wing patterns were so gloriously _vivid!_ He leapt high, nary a scratch on his aunt’s shoulder, flapped once and glided the short distance to his mother. His neat takeoff startled a _“nice!”_ out of her. His landing, however, took her aback. She flinched when he got close, so he didn’t land where he could have. His quick mind did the math, and landing on a nervous person’s shoulder could be disastrous. Instead, he landed on her knee, next to his sister.  
   She immediately cooed and reached tentatively toward him with her free hand. “I’m sorry kiddo, my depth perception isn’t very good. You did quite well, don’t mind me.”  
   She watched him for any sign of displeasure, and started with his tail. She wasn’t confident enough to touch the delicate frill at the end, but she also didn’t want to go right for his head. She had enough experience with animals that _weren’t_ sentient to know that you never made sudden moves or obstructed their field of vision, at least not the first time you were introduced. She could only imagine what it might do for a _sentient_ creature.  
   His tail twitched. She was too timid; it tickled. To her credit, she didn’t shy away. She smoothed a hand up his tail, with more skin contact to avoid tickling. Up over his haunches, keeping a wary eye on him. She didn’t seem frightened of him; more scared of offending him, he thought. She was respectful of his person, though he could see that Look in her eye. He’d seen it before. She just wanted to pick him up and hug the daylights out of him. His respect went up a notch when she didn’t. She made happy noises, smiled a lot. He didn’t know what to do with a mother who saw him as a beautiful creature, rather than a soldier who never seemed to be up to snuff.  
   He _really_ didn’t know what to do when she cupped his chin and planted a kiss on his tiny brow. She didn’t linger, and it wasn’t a loud smack like she did with the baby, but he’d never known affection from his mother. Even his aunt had never dared kiss his forehead, though she was affectionate in other ways.  
   “You look so confused,” she chuckled in that raspy voice of hers. “Surely this isn’t the first time somebody’s kissed your forehead. Heck, I’ve seen several pictures of you dad kissing people’s cheeks. Doesn’t he..?” Her brow furrowed about three rows of wheat when Avi clearly hadn’t thought of kissing his son’s cheek.  
   There was an awkward silence for several seconds. “I am a soldier, Mother. Nothing more. You made that pretty clear from day one.”  
   Angel’s eyes sprouted tears immediately. “ _Please_ tell me this was _after_ I took a blow to the head! Why would I say something so horrid?”  
   Kapa snorted a laugh that startled even him. “Yeah, we showed up after that.”  
   She landed another kiss on his forehead, louder this time. More emphatic. “You put that nonsense down to the brain damage, okay? Sure, you protect your… aunt, but if that’s _all_ you do, you’ll go bonkers.”  
   He scowled and backed off of her knee. “You taught us vigilance. You said if we blink, we fail. ‘Never forget your duty,’ that’s your number one lesson. You’ve gone soft.” He turned his back on her and leapt for his aunt’s shoulder.  
   Two tears fell behind him, one hand stretched toward him. “You can be both,” she croaked.  
   Menolly patted her arm with sticky fingers, sensing her distress. She plopped a kiss on the rosy waves, but her heart was aching. Did all of her children see her as a… _dictator?_  
   Kapa vanished, then. Bubbles had a new trick, apparently. Since he couldn’t come to her, she tried to Pull him to her, the same way Menolly had. Luckily for him, it worked. Fortunately for his parents, he was able to tell his aunt what had happened.  
   “I guess we know how you’re getting your luggage,” Esther said dryly.  
   “Don’t you mean _our_ luggage?” Avi asked.  
   She shook her head. “It’s going to look weird enough with you ‘missing the flight’. If I’m not there, people might ask questions.”  
   “Couldn’t you say he’s si--” Angel clutched her throat, took a sip of water, and tried again. She couldn’t say “sick”, because he wasn’t.  
   She couldn’t lie. She didn’t know why, because they’d forgotten that part.  
   Esther caught the gist of what she was trying to say, and yes, that was going to be the story. “Even being his sister, I’m still the manager.” She shrugged. “I go where they go. Sorry.”  
   Kapaneus and Maisie appeared in the room while their mother was trying to figure out why she couldn’t speak. Maisie was better at teleporting to people, while Whiskers was place-oriented, so she’d gone. Maisie struggled with the suitcase one-handed, because the other had to touch Kapa to bring him with. He had the diaper bag in his paws, which he promptly deposited on the floor beside the chair. He wrapped his forelegs and tail around his aunt’s neck, and Bubbles Pulled them to her.  
   Maisie saw her mother in the bed, and clearly wanted to stay. Her mother wanted her to stay equally as badly, but she blew her daughter a kiss and gently ordered her to go back to whoever she was supposed to protect. “I’ll see you soon, ‘kay?” She waggled her fingers goodbye.  
   Maisie didn’t know what to do with affection from her mother any more than her brother did. She blushed, waved, and vanished.  
   “So they protect the other band members? Is that what you said?” She was still looking at the spot her children had occupied.  
   “And Esther, yes.”  
   She smiled. “That’s nice. Probably why they chose me, huh?”  
   “Sorry, I don’t follow.”  
   She looked up at him, half of a smile left over from seeing her adorable blue daughter. “Well, I’m trusting my children to them. If I didn’t like all of you guys, that’d be a problem, wouldn’t it?”  
   It was obvious that he hadn’t thought of that aspect of things. She laughed, and though the sound was rough (because she kept forgetting to sign, or use telepathy), he was glad of it. He’d heard her laugh more this day than in the entirety of their acquaintance.  
   She caught that tendril of thought, and cocked her head. “Was I a terrible tyrant?”  
   His face went gaunt, just thinking about the day Angel became a stranger. “Not always. It’s like… when you hit your head, you lost that last bit of humanity.” He spoke to the window, seeing little. “Before that… You were struggling with dysphoria, and I was too blind to see it.”  
   He looked at her, then. “Maybe I was, too. When we met, you looked like this.” His hand traced the side of her face. The heart monitor quietly spiked behind them, but he didn’t Feel it through the link.  
   “Then you were taken away, and I was left with an egg. When you hatched, you were as small as a house cat. It wasn’t until you were my size again that I remembered this part of you.” His hand rested at her nape, fanning the pulse that now beat. Her reaction was the same, that shiver and slow blink that he couldn’t feel all those months ago.  
   “You were like this in my memory, but you were trapped in a dragon body in real life. I think it made us both a little crazy.” His thumb continued to drive the breath from her in shallow pants.  
   “I don’t know what was going on in your head, even after the Bonding. You kept me locked out. Out of everything, maybe. Maybe if you pushed hard enough, you could forget… and then you did, and it was worse.” His voice grew rough and deep. It plucked her heartstrings with vicious precision.  
   She saw where this could go, as she did those months ago. The difference was, she could choose another path, and she did. Before he could get it in his head to go kissing her with their child on her lap, she leaned into him. She ducked her head under his and held him with her free arm, as best she could with an IV and O2 monitor. Menolly threw herself at his stomach, arms wide. The baby didn’t understand why Daddy was sad, but if Mama thought a hug would help, well, she could hug him, too.  
   This was new, and it felt… right. The Angel he knew, the one he’d been putting on a pedestal this entire time, hadn’t hugged him. She’d padded his world with the oblivion of memory alteration, forced him to sleep. Yes, he'd hugged _her_ from time to time, but she’d never initiated an embrace. This Angel responded with normal, _human_ comfort. No fancy words, just a hug.  
   His long arms tucked them more securely against his chest. He kissed one blonde head, then scrunched to kiss the other. He tilted to lean against the mattress, knowing she needed her rest. She switched arms, holding the baby with the arm that had the IV, draping the arm with the blood pressure cuff over his side.  
   They lay there on the narrow hospital bed, Menolly between them, the picture of a happy family. Even the blood pressure cuff forcing her arm straight didn’t disturb them for long. Avi noted how low the reading was. Not dangerously low, but any cardiologist would’ve been happy with it.  
   They fell asleep that way.

 


	9. Unsatisfying Answers

She woke first, having had the most rest of the three of them. Each time she opened her eyes, she felt the need to pinch herself. His long, feathery lashes rested against cheeks that were far too hollow. There was just enough light to see the freckles that she’d drawn a few times, and never gotten right. They begged to be kissed, but she didn’t dare. He knew her, sort of, but she didn’t know if he was as wonderful as he seemed to be. No one was perfect. Not even him.  
   She kept wondering what the catch was. Nothing worth having was easy, so what would she have to do, to… what, keep him? She wrinkled her nose. He wasn’t hers, no matter what it looked like. She was his Guardian, and their children were more of the same. She didn’t know how she was supposed to protect him now, when she couldn’t even walk down a snowy street without fear of falling on her arse.  
   _Ach! Can I not even look at a beautiful man without picking everything apart?_ She mentally shook herself, snuggled a tiny bit closer. Nothing worth having was easy, and this felt awfully easy. She inhaled deeply, relishing the moment because she didn’t know how many more moments like this she would have. She impulsively pressed her lips to his shirt. He was asleep, but she would remember the experience. Mercy, _they were right! He’s got muscles under there!_  
   A chuckle vibrated against her lips. She burrowed her skull into his chest, mortified.  
   “And who, precisely, are ‘they’?” he asked. She wanted to slap the grin she could hear without seeing it, right off his face.  
   “Anyone who’s gotten to hug you. It’s damned near legendary by now,” she growled into his shirt.  
   Her breath was warm through his nightshirt. He shivered, which she felt through the skin on her forehead. She thought briefly about doing it on purpose, but that was playing with fire. She was old and wise. One did not tempt a dragon with empty promises.  
   _Not that I’m terribly tempting,_ she thought with a scowl.  
   “I’d prove you wrong if I could,” he rumbled. She couldn’t be sure where the warmth below the belt originated, because they both Felt it. She hoped it wasn’t coming from him, because there was still a sleeping infant between them.  
   That, at least, he could do something about. He pushed up slowly, to avoid waking her. He eased her into the car seat, buckled her in, and set it on the chair by the bed. If she’d been a normal baby, he would’ve set her on the floor, but his dad was right. She didn’t lean hard enough to fall over.  
   Instead of lying back down, he sat facing her on the mattress.  
   “Can I ask you something? It’s been bugging me for months.”  
   She stared at her hands, folded loosely in her lap. “I don’t know that I’m the right person to ask,” she demurred.  
   “You’re the only one who would know. I’ve asked before, but… I don’t think you told me everything.” He lifted her chin with one hand, so she could see the conflict in his eyes. “Please.”  
   As always, all it took was that word, from him, asked in earnest. She nodded wearily.  
   “Why did you do it?”  
   Her brow puckered. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to be more specific.”  
   “Why did you… You said you knew you’d come back, but… you _died_ for me!”  
   Her hand flew up in a reflexive gesture he knew well, before he finished the last sentence. She didn’t even seem to notice. Did he ask her if she just cast a spell, or let it pass?  
   They might need magic later, so he let it pass. For now.  
   “I don’t remember dying. I’m told that’s normal,” she said dryly.  
   He blew out a puff of frustration. “You said he came to you, told you they needed you, and that’s all you needed to know. I don’t understand why you would literally die to protect me.”  
   “Oh, is _that_ all?” she growled. It triggered a small coughing fit. He handed her tissues and waited for it to pass.  
   When he said nothing more, she looked out the window to gather her thoughts. “Did I tell you that I don’t contribute anything significant to society? I don’t work, can’t even keep a volunteer gig. People don’t really… get me. So I sit in my apartment, with my cat, and try to find ways to pass my ‘life sentence’. I got the message after a while: no early release for good behavior.  
   “So I draw, write, crochet, but everything is… average. There are better artists, and worse ones.” Her head lolled his way for a moment. “Average, by definition. Same with everything I do. I’m not great, not horrible. Stuck in the doldrums of mediocrity, wondering why I’m supposed to stick around.  
   “Well, apparently someone came along and told me why. If that was an angel, I’d be sold--emphasis on ‘if’, of course.”  
   He laughed. “Yeah, you said you had silver and holy water by the bed, and salt at all the windows and doors.”  
   Her head swung around again. “Well, if nothing else convinced me, that’d do it. No one knows about that, except a few of my friends you wouldn’t have met.”  
   He plucked her hands from the blanket and held them so she couldn’t turn away again. “But that still doesn’t tell me why you’d _die_... for me.”  
   She was confused. Then her brow cleared when she heard what he didn’t say.  
   “You don’t think your life is worth the sacrifice.” He couldn’t deny it, nor could he look her in the eye. He stared at their joined hands instead.  
   “Why did it have to be yours? I don’t… It’s not a straight exchange, a life for a life. Why would He… I couldn’t accept that kind of ‘gift’.” Here, he did look up. “You were living a half life. No one man is worth that.”  
   She slipped her hands from his, cupped his face tenderly. “Whether or not you believe it, _you_ are. And besides, it’s not just you. The kids protect the rest of the band.” She tried a smile, and only partially succeeded. “Stow the ego for a bit, would ya?”  
   He didn’t succeed any better at smiling, but he tried.  
   “He sent dragons to protect y’all, right? Well, who was most likely to embrace such a gift?” She waggled his head side to side, hands buried halfway in his hair. The O2 monitor snagged a bit, but neither noticed. “That’d be you, in case it wasn’t as obvious as the freckles on your nose.”  
   That startled a genuine smile out of him.  
   He tapped the end of her nose. “That still doesn’t tell me why you think so little of your own life, that you would throw it at the feet of the first angel to come calling. Especially when you didn’t know you’d get your body back.”  
   She snorted, hands dropped to his chest. “This old thing? Nah, I was better off without these shackles.”  
   He covered her smaller hands with his longer ones. “Sweetheart, I’ve seen you without it, and you were _not_ better off.” Her hands clenched under his. As usual, he hadn’t noticed the endearment.  
   “I’d much rather be a dragon,” she snarled with surprising heat.  
   He set his lips briefly against her forehead. “You merged with your dragon half, so maybe you still _can_ be a dragon. Maybe you’re like me, like my mother.”  
   “What?” He’d forgotten to mention that part.  
   He grinned down into her startled face. “We are the last known dragon family. I’m a dragon on Mom’s side. She says I can Shift someday, if I practice enough.”  
   She wrinkled her nose. “So you’re saying I’ll have OT _and_ shapeshifting practice to do?”  
   He kissed the tip of her nose. “Yes ma’am, and no skimping, either. If you want to be a dragon again, it’s going to take just as much work as they’ll put you through here, maybe more.”  
   “Eh, nothing worth having is easy.”  
   Avi groaned long and loud, set his forehead against hers. “I swear, you and my mom are gonna be the death of me with that expression.”  
   Angel laughed, but it was a tight chuckle. He didn’t seem to think twice about dropping kisses on her nose, or her head, but every one rattled her nerves. It was hard to hold him at arm’s length long enough to get to know him, when he was rarely actually _at_ arm’s length.  
   “You know, the harder you push, the harder I’ll push back.”  
   _Shards, I don’t even have privacy in my own head,_ she grumbled.  
   _:You’ll figure out how to block me. You did before.:_  
_:Oh sure, say that in my head and rub it in why don’tcha?:_  
   He laughed. _:I’m not apologizing this time. You’ve had a huge barrier up since day one. I’m enjoying this while I can. It’s nice to know what’s going on in this complicated brain of yours, once in a while.:_ He flattened the braids against her skull. _:If you won’t open up, how am I supposed to know what to do? What not to do? Even being psychic doesn’t help if you shut me out again.:_ A light splatter of tears hit her fists.  
   The last word hit her in the gut. Apparently, she’d been pushing him away--the thing she was trying to do now--the whole time they’d known each other. It only made things worse. How, then, did she retain a sense of self, in a relationship where they were Bound clear down to their bones? She valued her independence above most other things.  
   _:You don’t have to be so strong all the time, you know.:_  
   “Yes, I do. It’s the only way I know to survive.”  
   He saw the grim determination in her eyes. He’d seen it countless times, that iron will. It was the one constant throughout her evolution. He also saw the bleak void behind it. She said that happiness never lasted long. She seemed to expect everything good in her life to vanish into that void, leave her more empty than before.  
   That’s why she fought so hard. If she never found happiness, she never had to watch it get taken away.  
   _:The more I want something, the less chance it works out,:_ she agreed. _:So I just… stop expecting good things to happen. If they do, I don’t take it for granted.:_  
   _:You keep waiting for that other shoe,:_ he realized. She nodded, the hair on their foreheads meshing into one calico patch.  
   _:You’ve got some pretty giant shoes to fill,:_ she said. The words “when you leave” hovered between them, unsaid but heard nonetheless.  
   Before he could think about it too much, or give her any warning, he tilted her head back and kissed the daylights out of her. The moment his lips met hers, time seemed to stand still. The shocks of the previous kisses were magnified twofold. It wasn’t lips to skin; it was far more potent than that. It nearly robbed him of breath, and all he’d done was press his mouth to hers!  
   Neither of them were breathing very well. Only one of them was on a monitor, tangled in his shirt though it was. One of the nurses poked his head in to see why she was having trouble breathing, and very quickly ducked back out.  
   She was content to keep on as they were. He tried to persuade her to open her mouth, but she wouldn’t. He tasted broth on her lips, and something faintly unpleasant, but barely noticed.  
   He let go of her long enough to ask her to let him in. She rumbled a distant chuckle, lips pressed firmly together. _:Not a chance. I know what’s been fermenting in here, and you don’t want any.:_  
   He’d forgotten about the tubes, and the bone broth. He settled for learning the contours of her face with his lips. Lavender light lit her lashes where they lay on her cheeks. She shifted on the bed, craving what was currently impossible. Her hands restlessly knotted and unknotted fistfuls of his nightshirt. The relatively chaste kisses wreaked havoc on them, their personal reactions amplified by the Bond bouncing it back and forth between them. He felt his own arousal, combined with hers, and she was in the same boat.  
   If she hadn’t been in hospital, all of their good intentions could have gone out the window. Fortunately for their honor, she was in no shape to be doing what they wanted to do. It would take time to get used to the amplification that a telepathic bond created, and they had lots of it.

 


	10. What Could Be

Someone from Occupational Therapy came in shortly after, to put her through a few paces. They wanted her arms and legs to be able to hold her upright before they let her walk the halls.  
   “So how long ‘til I get the catheter out?” she asked, voice even more ragged from the exercises. She'd always said that OT and PT were tasks that sounded simple enough, until you had to do them.  
   “You already know the answer to that. Not until you can use the bathroom on your own.”  
   Angel frowned. “Yes, but that doesn't tell me in days, just milestones. When am I going to be up and about?”  
   The man shrugged. “Get used to hearing us say ‘when you're ready’, ‘cause that's the answer.”  
   She groaned and flopped back against the pillows.  
   “Look, you're not going to undo 5 months of inactivity in a day. We did what we could to stave off atrophy, but it's still not going to be quick, or easy. Just be patient, follow doctor's orders, and you'll get there.”  
   When he left, she was too tired to change her daughter's diaper, so she had to let Avi do it.  
   “You'd think it'd be a good thing, but it's just another reminder of my limits,” she growled.  
   "I'm sure she'll make plenty of dirty diapers when you're all healed up. No rush, right?"  
   He exaggerated the process to try and make her feel better. It was only successful because he was so darned adorable, but she wouldn't say so.  
   "So... everyone else is in Portugal, huh?"  
   "Mm hmm." His mouth was occupied by a tiny fist, which he was pretending to chew. She wished her phone were handy, so she could remember how his beard curled around those tiny fingers. She was tempted to try to draw it later.  
   He angled his buttocks toward her without a word, so she couldn't be blamed for missing the phone sticking out of the rear pocket. He had to prompt her via telepathy before she caught on.  
   "Oh! Right! Uh..."  
   She gingerly poked two fingers into the tight pocket and slid the phone out. He didn't seem outwardly disturbed by the process, but she knew better.  
   He told her how to unlock the phone, where the camera was, all while nibbling on chubby baby fingers.  
   Her hands shook so badly, she couldn't be sure any of the photos would turn out. She called the technique "spray and pray": take lots of pictures and hope something worked. She also recorded video footage as a backup. She could never be sure how long anything would last, so she documented every precious memory. Some of the photos had been lost before the digital age, but these would be hers forever.  
   _As long as he remembers to send them to me, that is._   
   He glanced at her, his expression unreadable. _:Or you could send them now. You've got my phone, and you know your email, or however you want them sent.:_  
   She sat straighter. _:As you say, it's your phone. I would never presume...:_  
 _:What?:_ He sat the baby in his lap and faced her. _:You think it would be weird for me to have your email? Your phone number?:_ He clapped Menolly's feet together to emphasize how silly that sounded. He was holding their child in his lap. _:Most people exchange phone numbers before...:_ Suddenly shy, he stared at their daughter's downy head.  
   The absurdity of it struck her, then. Neither of them felt comfortable talking about anything intimate, yet the evidence of past intimacy sat drooling on her father's arm.  
   She couldn't help but giggle.  
   He hadn't caught the drift of her thoughts. He looked up, confused and adorable. His hair hadn't been brushed since he was yanked out of bed. Dark shadows emphasized the red, puffy eyes that blinked down at her. The worst part was, he had the temerity to look wonderful, despite the carrot puree in his beard.  
   Her eyes watered with mirth. She clutched her tender ribcage with one arm while the other was occupied by the blood pressure cuff. She knew she was supposed to be quiet and still for it, but the giggles had her in their clutches.  
   This, of course, resulted in a higher reading, which meant a visit from the nurse.  
   "As long as you're up, you may as well drink some more broth. It's good to see you happy." She clapped Avi on the back as she left, having concluded that he was to thank for her patient's good humor.  
   When she left, he asked what was so funny.  
   "Everything," she signed. Laughter might be the best medicine for most things, but not a sore throat. "You have food in your beard, BTW." She didn't think "BTW" was proper sign language, but she was tired.  
   He nabbed a tissue and dabbed at his beard blindly. A glob of orange nestled firmly under his chin, where he couldn't find it without a mirror.  
   Angel plucked it from his hand, shaking her head and smiling. She was an old hand at removing food from a man's beard. She gently teased it out of the depths, having learned not to grab and pull. It took several tissues, but she got most of it out.  
   The nurse brought her broth while she was occupied, and left with a maternal smile.  
   "Most gone. You need wash face," she signed.  
   Her gentle touch had an effect on him. It wasn't a sensual caress, yet his heart stuttered. Wives dabbed at their husband's faces every day without a thought. They did the same for their children, as Angel was doing now. She wiped their daughter's face and hands with a baby wipe, and quite naturally swabbed his hands where Menolly had "shared" some of her food. She left the nail beds to him. A wet wipe wasn't up to the task.  
   _:Can you find a change of clothes for her after you wash up?:_ She was blotting the orange stains on the pink footed onesie, but it was a lost cause.  
   When he didn't respond, or move, she looked up. While she couldn't quite read his face, or untangle the feelings wafting along the link, they made her nervous. He looked like a man who was peeking through a window into a life he wanted.  
  

 


	11. Truth is Stranger Than Fiction, Even in Fiction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We get down to the nitty gritty of what happened, and it's not exactly a comfortable topic.

When he came back from washing his face and hands, he helped her get the baby changed into a purple dinosaur onesie. The baby dropped off to sleep shortly after, which Angel thought was odd. She slept more than a baby her age ought to.  
   “Well, she did teleport, with 2 other people, across an entire ocean,” he pointed out.  
   “Oh yeah, I keep forgetting she can do that…” They put her back in the car seat, but Angel couldn’t bear to have her further than the foot of the bed. It was like if she stopped being able to see the baby, she’d… cease to exist, or something.  
   “Can I ask you something?” Angel sounded reluctant to ask, which made him nervous. She was staring at their daughter, face pinched.  
   “Sure...”  
   “You never really explained  _how_  the kids were made. You said she’d just given birth, but Menolly is nearly 6 months old. Does that mean she laid 2 clutches in 6 months? That’s both confusing, and  _really_  not good for the body.”  
   “Yeah, Gwinn wasn’t too happy about the second… clutch?”  
   “That’s what a group of eggs is called, yes.”  
   She waited for answers. He shifted on the edge of the bed, unsure how to approach the subject.  
   “I’m confused because she--okay,  _I”_ (when he gave her a Look) “was an astral projection. I don’t know how that… works. And then sh--I was a dragon? I know you love dragons, but I didn’t think you liked them like  _that_ …”  
   “I  _don’t!”  
_   “Okay, then explain things so I understand.” She waited some more, while he visibly struggled. “The less I understand something, the more I worry at it, like a… dragon with a bone.”  
   He snorted.  
   “To be honest, I don’t really understand the first time, either.” Realizing how it sounded, he blushed, unable to look at her. “You said something about having a… field of energy, that only tightened up enough to feel solid where it needed to.”  
   “Energy conservation, makes sense.”  
   “Somehow, you could feel things, even though you didn’t feel like… anything, to me. I mean, your hair, your skin, your teeth…” He broke off, blushing harder. He addressed the wall over her head. “It all felt the same. Not hard, or soft, hot or cold.” His eyes fused to the plug on the wall, the blush equally fused to his face.  
   “Did I tell you what energy it was using? ‘Cause if it used what I think it did, that’d explain how I’d feel things, but you wouldn’t,” she said to the wall by the window. She was every bit as uncomfortable with the conversation as he was.  
   “Your soul,” he choked.  
   She nodded at the wall. “Thought so.” She steeled herself enough to look at him, and touch his hand to get his attention. “That meant that you were touching my  _soul;”_ she gripped his hand for emphasis, “hardened and refined into solid form. Of  _course_  I’d feel things! Not the same way I do now, but… I dunno, viscerally? Maybe it wouldn’t register as skin contact, but… Maybe more like a telepathic connection? I really don’t know. But it would’ve been far deeper than the skin.”  
   His eyes widened in shock, haunted by the knowledge of what she’d been living with. Her stubborn refusal to let the memories back in made a bit more sense.  
   She let go of his hand, looked away. “I don’t know how the rest would’ve gone, but I think I’m glad I don’t remember that part. I’m not sure anything could compete with that. ‘S not a comparison I’d want to be making forever.”   
   There was a long, uncomfortable pause, filled with thoughts they didn’t want to share. But they did, anyway, because neither could stop it.  
   “So,” she said at length, “What about when I was a dragon?” The more she knew, the easier it was getting to use personal pronouns.  
   He was silent so long, with such odd feelings floating her way, she looked at him, brow puckered.  
   “Whatever it is, it’s best to tell me now, before…”  _before I get too attached,_  she thought.  
   His eyes grew darker, with a guilt she couldn’t read past.  
   “What’s wrong? Is there another dragon out there that, ah… did the deed? Was it like some arranged marriage situation, except without the marriage part? I mean, if they needed more dragons…”  
   “I have a girlfriend,” he blurted.  
   She didn’t react the way he expected. He’d forgotten that the dragon had known, without the clues she’d given at the time. Angel had known the truth when she became a Vessel.  
   “So the rumors are true. And you feel guilty for cheating on her?”  
   “That too.” he said, and stopped, perplexed. She wasn’t surprised, or hurt, or… anything. He mentally shook his head and forged on, before he lost his nerve. “Thing is… I thought you  _were_  her, that night!” He stared into her eyes, trying to get her to understand, to forgive.  
   Her brow furrowed. “Did… did you share a bed with the dragon..? ‘Cause that’s the only way I can think of that… happening...”  
   He nodded.  
   “Why would you share a bed with a dragon big enough for… that..? Why didn’t she sleep on the floor?”  
   “Like a dog?” He couldn’t keep the long-buried hurt from his face.  
   His expression, and the hurt emanating from him, gave her pause. “Did...  _I_  say that, or did you?” From what she’d heard already, she was afraid of his answer.  
   He threw one arm wide in frustration. “I said we should get _out,_  let you stretch your legs. You were cooped up in the house, or a car, or in a crowd. I thought you needed some fresh air.” He stopped, for strength. “Then you woofed.”  
   Angel winced so hard her chin touched her collarbone. “Yikes.” She touched his hand, where it had landed on his knee. “I’m sorry.”  
   He turned his hand over, gripped hers tightly, tears shining a bright warning.  
   “Did we at least have fun? Did I fly?” Her own eyes shone a brighter warning.  
   He smiled, a single tear breaking free. “Yes, you flew. I was scared witless, but I think the baby liked it.”  
   “Wait, why would you be scared, but the baby was happy? They can’t see that far at her age. I would’ve been less than a blur in the sky.”  
   He ruffled her hair with his free hand. “Not if she was riding on your back.”  
_“What?!_ You let me fly with a  _newborn_  on my back?!”  
   “Settle down,” he said with a grin. Their reversal of roles was amusing. At the time, it'd been him questioning her. “She was in the carrier thing, here.” He mimed straps, from shoulders to belly button. She didn’t watch his hands past his ribcage, one hand curling in the sheets beside her.  
   “Well, at least she was somewhat safe. We didn’t go very high, did we? Was I at least a  _little_  responsible?” she fretted.  
   He impulsively kissed her forehead. “Yes, we were safe.” He chuckled ruefully. “Took me a bit to figure that out, though. I, ah… might have... screamed a little…” His head ducked with boyish chagrin.  
   Angel laughed until a coughing fit took hold. He snatched up the tissues and ice water, which was becoming a reflex by now. She made a face at the contents of the tissue, but he didn’t see what was in them. The doctor said she’d be coughing things up for a while, so he didn’t worry too much.  
   When she was breathing better, he reassured her that they’d only done a long glide to the car. “Looking back, it seems so fun; but at the time, it felt like we were as high as an airplane.”  
   “Hindsight is 20/20,” she chuckled. Her voice sounded worse than it had been. He felt bad for making her laugh, then realized what he was thinking.  
   “Silly bass, laughter heals everything… except a sore throat. But everything else feels better.” She smiled; a soft, almost maternal thing. The artificial light above caught in the crinkles at the corners of her eyes, amplified by her glasses. She kept forgetting to take them off before she dozed, and he was distracted by other things.  
   “So…” she said, drawing out the word. “You thought a dragon was your girlfriend, but for some reason, the dragon didn’t stop you?”  
   He shifted on the bed, making the mattress squeak quietly, legs pinched closer together. “She, ah… You, I mean… Said you didn’t feel anything… significant.”  
   “Ouch.”  
   “You said the, ah… opening is bigger than any human’s… parts, so…”  
   “Oh. I don’t really understand that, but okay.”  
   “You drew a diagram. If I find it, I can show it to you.”  
   “Yeah, sure,” she said distantly, without much enthusiasm.  
   “Like my mother said, you need to know these things if you’re going to be a dragon. Well, she said it to  _me_ , since I’m the one you drew the diagrams for, but now it applies to you.” His brow curled briefly. “It’s funny. You drew something for me, but now you don’t remember what it is, so you need it…”  
   “Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey,” she chuckled weakly.  
   He heard an odd lack of enthusiasm.  
   “You do need to know what you’re supposed to look like. You don’t sound very enthusiastic about it, but if you can’t picture it, how will you know if it’s right?”  
   “No, I know. I do want to be a dragon.” Her voice was strangely dull.  
   “You don’t sound like you do.” He turned her head to face him. “What’s wrong?”  
   Her eyes went... hollow. “There’s so much I don’t remember. So much I missed… I never get to experience the good things…” Tears trickled down, over his hand. “I’ve had so many children, but it’s never been the  _right_  way; the way every little girl dreams. It’s always been inconvenient timing. There’s never been the storybook type of… I dunno, the proud dad doting on the mom-to-be, talking to the belly bump, cute photos; or really, any sort of positive acknowledgement.” Her arms crossed over her sagging midsection, as though she had a horrible stomach ache. “There was always so much  _stress,_  I was high risk, and nobody seemed to care. Some people pretended it wasn’t happening, some were more concerned about the baby, and I never really got to  _relax,_  and enjoy the process. Even now, with you, it sounds like it was just… a job. A thing I had to do, whether or not I wanted to.” Her voice was high in her nose, trying to stave off tears.  
   He gently pried her arms from around the hole in her core; mindful of the sensors, cuff, and IV. She resisted, caught up in the misery of her past, but she hadn’t regained her strength yet. Meanwhile, he’d been wrestling her to the ground at least once a week, when she was a full-grown dragon. It was hardly a contest. He guided her arms around his torso instead, let her weep herself hoarse. His cheek rested on her hair, where a few spots of moisture seeped into her scalp.  
   When she was spent, drooping backwards, he helped her lay back on the pillows.  
   “I’m sorry for being a downer all the time,” she started to say.  
   He planted a quick, firm kiss on her lips. “Quit apologizing. You’ve had it rough. It’s not going to be sunshine and roses right away, I get that now. And hey, maybe there will be a next time, we don’t know.”  
   She covered his mouth with a hand. “You don’t, but  _I_  do. No,  _listen_.” She grabbed his cheek with the other hand, the plastic of the oxygen monitor digging into his cheek. The pain registered dully through the link.  
   “Even if there’s a uterus in here, it belongs to a  _dragon_. You told me yourself, it doesn’t handle human babies well. Let’s say that…” she blushed, her legs twisted together, but she forged on. “Let’s say things go that direction.” She stared at his chin, unable to talk about intimate things while his eyes pleaded with her over her hand. “I would have to  _immediately_  change into a dragon, provided I know how. That’s the only way I can think of, to make sure it’s all eggs. I’d have to  _stay_  a dragon.” Here, she glared into his face. “The whole time, I’d have to stay a dragon. There would _be_ no happy family bonding, because you don’t have the time to learn how to Shift; and besides, it’s not the  _same!_  Even if you could Shift… I don’t know how to dragon. You don’t know how. We’d be stumbling along, trying to figure things out, and by the time we figured it out, oh look, there’s a bunch of eggs.”  
   Her hands slipped from his face, to her lap. “I missed the boat. That’s all there is to it.” Three tears landed on her lax fingertips.  
   He lifted the hand without the monitor, kissed her fingertips. He pressed them to his cheek for a moment. “There’s always C-section, you know. You didn’t have any problems until you went into labor.”  
   Her shoulders slumped a fraction lower. “I have a weak abdominal wall. Herniated it the first time round. It… It might work, once, but…” a weak shrug concluded her fatalistic assessment.  
   He lifted her chin, a smile playing about his eyes. “We’ve got fourteen children. I think once is enough, don’t you?”  
   She laughed, the remainder of the tears streaming down her cheeks. “I guess it does sound silly, doesn’t it? That’s not even counting the ones I had before… whatever happened.”  
   “Do I want to know how many there are, total?”  
   She smirked. “Probably not.”  
   “Well, I’ll need to know eventually,” he said, finger wagging at her.  
   The laughter fell out of her eyes, as though a gallows door opened up. “Not necessarily.”  
   “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, carefully keeping the hurt from his voice.  
   The old pain was in her gaze. “You keep forgetting that I’m just supposed to  _protect_  you.” The plastic oxygen monitor flattened to his chest. “Nobody said we were… I dunno, soul mates, or anything. I’m not… I told you, I  _can’t_  get my hopes up. It’s too dangerous. Expect the worst, hope for the best, yeah?  _That’s_  how I survive. Besides, you haven’t told me about your girlfriend; how it ended,  _if_  it ended. I won’t ask you to do that, if you’re wondering. She was here first.”  
   There was that almost-laugh again. “We have fourteen kids together, and you won’t ask me to leave my girlfriend. I don’t think I’ll ever understand you.”  
   Her laugh was self-deprecating.


	12. Celestial Proposition

Samandriel rushed in, lifted Avi’s shirt, and started slapping on heart sensor pads.  
   “What the--?”  
   “We need a surrogate heartbeat. She's needed in conference. Don't worry, we won't be disturbed.”  
_I'm already disturbed,_  he thought.  
   “Why do you need my heartbeat? Is hers going to stop?!”  
   “Suspended animation. No time to explain.” He yanked the cords off her silicon pads with loud snaps and jammed them on his--but not before he saw and heard the flatline.  _Before_  the first lead was switched.  
   Avi snatched up her wrist, but there was no pulse. He glared at the intruder.  
   Samandriel lifted one eyelid so he could see the misty grey orbs beneath. “See? She’s alive, just frozen. Please, calm your heartbeat so nobody thinks she’s in trouble.”  
   “How do  _I_  know she isn’t in trouble?!”  
   _“Look_. Her face will tell you if she is in distress. Feel the Link. She lives.”  
   It was strange. Her face registered emotions, though her chest lay still. It was mostly disgust or disdain that they saw, which made him wonder what was happening. Those tiny signs of life got his heart rate where it needed to be, though it was a struggle to keep it there.

   Angel fell asleep faster than she could register. One minute she was laughing at herself; the next, she was in a familiar place, seemingly made of light and vague shapes. One shape she knew as well as she knew her own hand.  
   “Gabriel,” she greeted with a nod. She didn’t know the other shape. Neither did she question that she knew everything that had happened in her life thus far. The knowledge was there, should she need it. Had she asked, she might perhaps have been told that her soul was what spoke here, and it carried all of her memories.  
   “I have a proposition to make,” the unfamiliar angelic shape said. It only had one pair of wings, whereas Gabriel…  
   He was always hard to “see”. She could never count wing pairs, or See whether he had wings at all. She’d given up, a few celestial years into her training. He was an enigma. The sooner she gave up on trying to define him, the better she actually understood him. Anywhere else, that sentence wouldn’t make sense.  
   “If you were human, I'd already have said no.”  
   The unnamed angel glanced at Gabriel, smug to the point of obnoxious.  
   “Don't look so smug. The only reason I'm withholding my refusal is because, being an angel, I doubt you meant that the way it sounded.” Her arms crossed over her old guardian angel robes. She didn’t notice them, any more than she noticed the return of her memories. Again, you learned to shed all extraneous details in this place.  
   “That is _exactly_  what he meant.” Gabriel seemed to lean against thin air. There wasn’t precisely air here, just as there was nothing for him to lean on; or even a solid form for him to lean  _with_. It was more of an impression one got.  
   “Then no.”  
   “I need a vessel,” he said through gritted teeth. She could tell he didn’t want to ask someone who was born  _mortal_  for any sort of assistance.  
   “Aww, did big brother get a shiny new toy?”  
   He couldn’t argue her statement that Gabriel was his big brother. He had a far larger... presence, in this place. She didn’t see what they really, truly looked like. She never could, but she could Feel their relative energies. Gabriel’s was simply larger. Archangel and Vessel snickered at the decidedly phallic symbolism. Angel regained her composure first, which surprised her.  
   She echoed her friend’s “posture”, leaning on nothing. “You want one that's stronger than his, more… powerful?” She gagged on the word ‘powerful’. She didn’t bat an eyelash at calling herself “his”.  
   Gabe beamed proudly. Those who wanted power the least tended to wield it more judiciously. Thoughts were as good as spoken here, it seemed. Either that, or it was the ethereal thread that linked them.  
   “He’s right, you know. I'd only whip out the big guns to protect Avi, as is my duty.” Her nose inched down, though she wore no glasses to look over.  
   Gabriel pushed away from the not-wall, bragging. “She'd tear the world apart, if it meant saving his life.” He rather enjoyed having such a powerful vessel. Perhaps it was his boastful nature that caused this jealousy in his brother.  
   “You exaggerate, Gabriel. I am a rational dragon. Will I do everything possible to keep him alive? Yes. Would I ransack a town to find him? No. I don't need to. I have the Bond; that's what it was designed for.”  
   “Then swear it,” the angel urged. “Swear to only transform to save your human.”  
   “Of _course_ not! I'm not stupid. If my own life, or the lives of my children were in danger, I'd be powerless. I would be slain, and he would be left defenseless.”  
   Gabe crossed his arms over his robe; rightfully smug, to his thinking.  
   The other angel perked up. Angel couldn't figure out if he was intrigued by her mental agility, or... turned on.  
   “Not gonna happen. I'm not a broodmare,” she flatly refused. Gabriel gave his brother his best “told you so” face.  
   “I only need one. You can have the rest,” he tried to persuade her.  
   The unspoken clarification was that only one would be his. The rest would be… she wasn’t sure. Clones of her? It was deucedly difficult to read the other angel. They wouldn’t be Gabriel’s, because he was kind of Angel's father, since his spark was used to make the dragon. He was also like a twin..? Being in this realm, wherever it was, confused her with its myriad intricacies.  
   They wouldn’t be Avi’s, either, because he wasn’t in the “room” (unspecified earth-adjacent realm). That didn’t even factor in the conversation they’d already had about potential futures.  
   “No. I’ve only got  _maybe_  one shot at a normal gestation. I’m not using it on the pet project of some angel I don’t know.”  
   He waved a hand negligently. “I can wait until you get that out of your system.”  
   She didn’t like the way he referred to human relations. “I’ll take  _that_  any day I can. I say again,  _no_.”  
   “We need some sort of muzzle to keep you in line,  _child_. An angel, plus a… Celestial Archdragon, or Arch Celestial Dragon, or  _whatever_  you've deemed yourself...” He made it sound like a childish whim! “...Should yield a stronger vessel than either of you.  _He_  was barely able to subdue you, the last time. A hybrid would be able to do so easily, should you step out of line again.”  
   Her teeth would have gritted, had she been corporeal. “That’s a slippery slope, and you know it. Besides, he’s got the Marks as an anchor. He proved they work. It’s still a no from me.”  
   He tried another tack. “What about when your human dies?”  
   “One, he’s not human.” This seemed to be a shock to both angels. “Wait,  _you_  didn’t know? I though angels could See True Natures. How--never mind, you can tell me later.  
   "Two, I’ll just have to align my brain the way The Doctor does. Humans in general will be my muzzle. Just keep me in the Guardian Angel rotation. They have a fresh perspective, because they're mortal. Their continued wide-eyed wonder and optimism will temper my eternal, jaded nature.”  
   “You’re basing your sanity on a fictional character?” Gabriel asked, when his brother didn’t get the reference.  
   “It seems like a viable model. Shorter-lived species should notice if I start to tip the wrong way. Mortals are always on the lookout for danger, since they have so few years to live. Plus I’ve got you, who knows the ins and outs of immortality, as a guide. Should I be deemed a hazard to myself and others, I will gladly lay my head down at His feet and let Him sever my head from my body.”  
   “Is that a promise?” The other angel leapt on her words, a gleam in his eye.  
   “No.”  
  Frustration rolled off of him in almost palpable waves.  
   “I will give you my word, but not my vow. I cannot lie, as you well know. Should my human fear me, I shall return to Gabriel to reevaluate; see if I need a vacation... or eternal rest. I would rather die than become the Horn of Gabriel, as told in the Bible. Well, certain versions of certain parts of it, anyway. I will not destroy the world I was born in.”  
   “And what if that is exactly what you are?”  
   Cold shivered down her astral form.  
   “Free will,” she said, throwing the words at the angel like a trump card.  
   Gabriel coughed uncomfortably. She glared his way. “If Dad says go, neither of us have a choice. Now, I’m not saying you’re my, ah…”  
   “Yeah, there’s no way of saving that sentence. And since when did you get savvy?”  
   “Classified,” he said grimly. He wasn’t about to lay his punishment on her shoulders. They were friends; perhaps more than friends; more, even, than family. “Point is, we don’t know if you’re a biblical weapon. But,” he said, drawing the word out, “ _if_ Dad decides to go that way, neither of us can say no. Me because I don’t have the luxury of free will, and you because we’re stuck like glue.”  
   “Wow, someone’s been on Earth a while. Seriously, when  _did_  that happen? Not that time matters to you, never mind. It’s just weird, seeing you act so… _human._ ”  
   His brother angel snorted with derision.  
   “Hey, I didn’t say it was a bad thing. For a Guardian Angel, maybe it’s a  _good_  thing. From what I’ve been hearing, most of the problems we had were because he didn’t really understand people. Scoff all ya like, he just gained a skill set you don’t seem to have.”  
   Brother angel was  _not_  happy to be seen as lesser.

   “I don’t think we should put up wards,” Avi cautioned.  
   Samandriel lowered his hands, offended at being questioned. “I was charged with your protection, and that is what I aim to do.”  
   “What if your wards actually  _attract_  things?” he asked, grabbing the nearest arm.  
   The angel was doubly offended at being touched.  
   "Listen to me. Evil creatures might know she’s human now, but maybe not  _where_  her human body is. You put up giant neon angel barriers, and they’ll know  _exactly_  where we are!”  
   Samandriel blanched; at least, his temporary vessel did. He hadn’t thought of that possibility.  
   “I’m not saying you should let down your guard. By all means, keep your sword out, and maybe some low-level passive stuff, but not the big bad repelling ones?” He left the details to Samandriel, who knew the specifics of celestial magic better than he did.  
   The angel thought for what appeared to be a second, but was much longer than that. Time was fluid to a celestial being.  
   He stood just inside the door, which Avi shut, blade out and ready. He held that posture for the duration of this “conference call” Angel was on.

   “We are at an impasse. I will continue to refuse your… proposal,” which took great effort not to spit back at him, “and you will attempt to press your case. I am a Vessel. I do not create custom vessels on demand. Perhaps one of my offspring will decide to host you; once they are fully grown, and _not_ assigned to a humanoid.” She was, as ever, careful with her wording. Mitch wasn’t human, so she wouldn’t give him a loophole.  
   “Will you swear to this?” he asked without much hope. She’d worn him down.  
   “I cannot.”  
   If he’d been human, she’d swear he rolled his eyes. He didn’t, but that was the impression she was left with, the gesture having taken a form she would recognize.  
   “It is not my life to offer. All I can do is prepare them for the possibility that they may serve a higher purpose, when they are no longer guarding their Bonded.”  
   Gabe stepped in, metaphorically. “And that’s all you’ll get from her. She has to get back to  _her_  Bonded. Samandriel sends concerns that must be addressed. Farewell, Uriel.”  


	13. Alterations

If Angel had retained a complete memory of that meeting, she would have been far more out of sorts than she was, when she woke from her trance. As usual, she only had an edited portion of events. Anything dangerous or unnecessary was filtered out. Her human brain had limited storage space, while her soul was a celestial version of a technological data cloud: limitless.  
  She woke to a vaguely familiar nurse, or aid, putting leads on her chest.  
  “What…” Her voice was unnaturally rough, as though it hadn’t been used in days.  
  “You died again… sort of.”  
  “You exaggerate. I _told_ you she was in suspended animation. Every time she communes with the Host, her bodily functions cease.”  
  “Power saving mode,” Angel growled. She wasn’t angry, per se, but her voice gave that impression. “How long was I out? Why were the leads off?”  
  Avi took up a lead and gently popped it where it had been on his own chest. He wasn’t a trained nurse, but the angel had done a fair number of them already, and he could see where the remainder went. He took a page from her book, ignoring the reactions bouncing back and forth through the link to get the task done while Samandriel filled her in. When the last lead was off his chest, he dropped his shirt down over the patchwork of chest hair, freckles, and sticky pads. He was _not_ looking forward to removing those later!  
  “I hope it was worth it,” he grumbled, thinking about the cleanup.  
  “I don’t think it was,” she rumbled back.  
  “Now, now, you don’t know that,” Gabriel said.  
  Avi spun around, but he couldn’t see the Archangel. His brow furrowed a full orchard.  
  “He’ll stop complaining about you going unchecked, and one of your children might become a vessel, like their mother. I think it was quite a productive little chat.”  
  Avi looked around, but saw no one else in the room. He dropped on the side of the bed a bit too abruptly for Angel to move her hand in time. He automatically apologized, but his mind was whirling.  
  “You may as well stop trying to see me, boy. There’s a reason I needed a vessel.”  
  “Yes, well, he brought up a relevant point, sir,” Samandriel interjected, anxious to leave his vessel before burning the man out.  
  Gabriel’s mouth twisted at being called “sir”, but he let it pass. “He can tell me. You go, I can see through your vessel’s hands.”  
  Samandriel looked down, and Avi could’ve sworn he yelped. He spun and ran out of the room, apparently unconcerned with what people would say.  
  Gabriel waved a hand, and the door gently swung shut. He came to stand on the other side of Angel. Though her Bonded couldn’t see that, he watched her eyes track the Archangel’s movement.  
  “What is this point that saved us from a lengthy debate?”  
  “You’re not going to tell me why I can’t see you?” he asked without much hope.  
  Gabe shrugged. “Some can, some can’t. Maybe after you transform…” Had he seen the mock glare he aimed at Angel, Avi might have bristled.  
  Angel lifted her arms in a “what?” pose. “How was I supposed to know you didn’t know? You could see all of the other mythical beasties we met.”  
  He squinted at Avi, and barely made out the irregularities in his skeleton. “To be fair, they are extremely rare, and he hasn’t Shifted yet. I can be forgiven for that oversight. Besides, I doubt _you_ Saw that before she told you!”  
  “She?”  
  “How did you know? You weren’t there for that!”  
  The Bonded pair spoke simultaneously, both confused.  
  Gabriel waved negligently. “I can read what I need to know from your memories. That’s not relevant, at the moment. What is relevant is the insight of a… dragon, I suppose. Things are beginning to make more sense. So, what say you?”  
  Angel saw the subtle change in her friend, how he ducked his head a little. She knew _that_ look quite well! It was the face of someone who’d glimpsed the grand design, seen how their impatience or frustration was unnecessary.  
  “Ah, well, he(?) was going to put up wards, but if evil things don’t know where she is, that’d just be a beacon… right..?” In the presence of his dragon, and an Archangel, his confidence faltered.  
  “To paraphrase Kerowynn, it could be an ‘oh shoot me now’ sign, couldn’t it?” Angel wasn’t surprised; in fact, she was abashed that she’d apparently never thought of it first.  
  Gabriel fluttered the fingers of one hand over her, and an ethereal display manifested in front of him. She could read Celestial, but not fluently, or backwards. Besides, he was skimming too fast for her to catch anything but an odd letter here or there. He mumbled to himself, a frown working its way into the schism of his facial region.  
  “Looking at your records, he might be correct. The attack in the yard might not have happened if you hadn’t put up active camouflage. Might have been better to rely on passive camouflage and the ‘lookaway field’, as you call it. Those were already in place before it flew near. Hmm, yes, must alter your programming there.”  
  His fingers flew over the display, and her brain felt… tingly. She didn’t like it, but he was telling her what he was doing, so she wasn’t concerned.  
  Avriel, on the other hand, was greatly disturbed. “What do you mean, ‘alter her programming’? Don’t change anything! I _just_ got her back where she understands things again!”  
  Angel seized his hand in a surprisingly strong grip. Since Gabriel was “plugged in” to her core, she could subconsciously tap into his energy. She didn’t know she did it, but a grin tugged one corner of Gabe’s mouth.  
  “He’s not doing what you think. He’s updating my _fighting tactics_ file! You _want_ him to do that! With what you just told us, we can avoid more danger. Don’t you _want_ that? Isn’t it good to see we’re listening to you?”  
  She didn’t know that while Gabriel was fiddling with her programming, her eyes were angel blue. He had too many bad memories of those eyes. It was worse because she was siding with Gabriel. She was supposed to be _his_... His… Guardian.  
  Angel saw the mental click, the walls slamming into place. It cut her down to the bone; right past the Marks. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she let go of his wrist. He shot to his feet and started pacing. Her eyes dropped to her lap, where moisture collected on the tattoos on the insides of her own wrists.  
  “I suppose now is the worst time to tell you, but… Decades, maybe centuries from now, some of the children might decide to do what I do. Guardian angels like me, who would be vessels for an angel of _their_ choosing. Others may remain guardian dragons. I made sure they had the choice. They’re safe, for now…”  
  “May as well tell him the other part now,” Gabriel suggested, withdrawing from her programming center.  
  She looked up, her eyes a natural, wicked green. She glared at her friend. “I. Said. No. He’ll never lay a _finger_ on me, orders or not!”  
  Gabe tsked at her. “You know you can’t refuse a direct order.”  
  “Free will,” she growled through what teeth she had.  
  He shrugged. “And maybe the Old Man will abide by that. It’s not like he can make me possess you, just to mate with my brother.” He shuddered so hard it was audible.  
  She smirked, but it wasn’t a pretty thing. “You’ve been in a similar spot before, if I’ve heard right.” She flicked her eyes toward her Bonded, though her head didn't move.  
  “And on that note, I’m out.” To Avi, not that he could see the transition, he said “If you think of any other helpful advice, let us know.” He didn’t say goodbye, so it took a moment to realize he’d left.  
  From halfway across the room, one word whispered through the dim room to pierce her heart: “Us?”  
  She sat there, in a pool of artificial light in an otherwise dark room, pale and thin. The footboard shielded Menolly from his view, so she appeared lost and alone. His heart hardened, because he felt the way she looked.  
  “My name is my duty,” she murmured slowly. Her voice was heavy with the weight of two worlds. “I can’t change what I am.” She huffed. “Which is funny, considering how much I’ve changed.” Her eyes speared him with a Christmas colored beam of green irises, on a flash of red. “For you, I might add.” She looked away, and the red blinked out. “But maybe you’d rather go back to having an angel you can’t see.” She shrugged, the weight on those wide shoulders almost palpable. “I don’t get to decide what you do or don’t do. Don’t want to, either.” She sniffled. “All I wanted to do was be useful; help someone who deserves it.”  
  She was so beaten, so defeated, that the word “useful” had been drained of all emotion. She no longer spat it out, like spoiled milk. It broke his heart a little more.  
  “I’m sure they won’t… they’ll find somewhere to put me, if you want out. They’re not going to waste so many years of training…” She absently rubbed her forearm, though she didn’t seem to notice. She hugged herself, bony shoulders nearly touching, which seemed to release a hidden spring in her spine.  
  Two flesh-colored wings, vestigial in size, popped out on either side of her vertebrae. They stretched up above her head, but she wasn’t expending the effort to snap them out to full size.  
  She should have been surprised, or excited. The first time she felt her wings should have been accompanied by emotion of some sort. Instead, she felt even more hollow. Her head dropped to her forearms, legs drawn up to her chest. Tears flooded down her legs, but she paid them no heed. She didn’t wail, or sniffle, she merely let them fall where they would. She wouldn’t burden him with the knowledge that she wept, if he wanted to walk away.  
  Something tickled one of her new wings. It twitched reflexively, but she didn’t look up.  
  “I keep forgetting…”  
  Her head shot up, eyes wide and shimmering with tears that trailed in her wake.  
  “These are dragon wings.” His fingers skipped lightly over one membrane, and it twitched away again. “Unprotected, raw, but real.”  
  “And ticklish,” she grumbled.  
  He chuckled. “Point taken.” He cupped her face; puffy and blotchy, but still very human. It tightened with wariness. He sighed internally.  
  “I’m sorry. I haven’t exactly had the best experience with angels in the past.”  
  “Then why is that my name?”  
  A smile lifted his lips, but didn’t quite reach his eyes. “That was an accident.”  
  Her brow puckered. He smoothed it with one thumb, his hand tugging the braid on that side further awry. “I could call you by your real name, if you like.”  
  His thumb had more work to do between her eyebrows. “I don’t know… I don’t feel like… _me_ anymore. Hearing my own name would be… It wouldn’t sound right, I don’t think.”  
  “No...” he started to say. She dropped her knees and fused her lips to his, kneeling on the bed to be able to reach. Her hands clutched his arms, unable to circle his neck without cords and tubes being pulled out. Her fledgeling wings cast shadows across their faces, warring for dominance in what looked like a kiss, on the outside.  
  They could feel each other’s emotions, to a point. It was mostly strong emotions, reduced to a whisper by distance and personal white noise. But when there was physical contact, it put a magnifying glass to those same feelings. Lust was a background note in this particular duet. It played second fiddle to frustration, confusion, sadness, and fear. Had it continued unchecked, they might have gotten caught up in the maelstrom of pent-up emotions.  
  Except they weren’t the only ones being tossed about in the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took a toll on the author, so if it stung a little, just know that it wasn't easy to write, either.


	14. An Angel Out of Water

A high whine quickly built into a hearty bawl, and some very uncharacteristic kicking.  
   Angel, or whoever she was now, broke away first. Maternal instinct was an unforgiving taskmistress. She unbuckled their daughter and held her tight, still kneeling on the bed. She rolled her shoulders, wincing, until she figured out how to tuck her wings in behind her shoulderblades, so she could lean against the pillows. She rumbled vague soothing noises, but all Menolly wanted was to get inside the hospital gown. She burrowed aimlessly into the thin fabric, whimpering her distress vocally and mentally.  
   Her flailing pulled the untied gown down with little effort. She was latched on in mere moments, though it felt like forever to her anxious parents.  
   “Shh, I’m sorry, sweetness. Mama wasn’t upset with you. It’s just life, sugarplum. It’s confusing, and emotional, and I didn’t have it all figured out before…” She choked to a stop, before she could start crying again. She was rocking, perhaps a bit too much, but the baby didn’t seem to mind.  
   Avriel smoothed a hand across her bare back, trying to soothe both mother and child. She shivered, but she wouldn’t let the violet tint of her eyes push him away again. She murmured nonsense, the rocking slowing to a gentle sway, focused as much on her child as she could, with adult skin to skin contact.  
_I’ve got to get used to this,_  she thought.  _If that’s always a distraction, I’ll never get anything done. Just accept what is, and let go of what isn’t._  It didn’t help as much as she liked, but if she could wrap her head round it, maybe she could be more mindful in the moment.  
_Guess all that therapy is paying off,_  she thought.  
   A snort ruffled her tangled braids.  
_And maybe I should figure out how to think inside thoughts while I’m at it,_  she growled, giving him disgruntled side eye.  
   He kissed the corner of her eye. _:Never.:  
_   She blew in his face out of the side of her mouth, like he was a stray hair. He kissed her brow. She blew at him and shrugged her ear to her shoulder, as if he were a gnat. He nabbed that ear between his teeth and tugged.  
   “Ach! What’s a girl supposed to do with you, anyway?” she growled, leaning away as far as she dared.  
   He tucked them against his chest, bumpy and slightly sticky though it was, arms around her shoulders. The answer that sprang to his mind didn’t make any sense, so he buried it where she couldn’t hear… he hoped.  
   She pretended not to “hear”, because it really didn’t make any sense at all.  
   “G’won now, you can’t be comfortable, twisted all round like that. Go wash off, or the glue will just get stuck in your chest hair.”  
   He slid back, off the bed, without letting go, and turned his legs the right way round. He wouldn’t miss this for the world. They couldn’t be sure when the baby would be fully weaned. Every time she nursed could be the last time. He stretched his long legs out beside her much shorter ones, set his head on top of hers, and just watched.  
   It unnerved her, but she tried to move past that. Hadn’t she just been saying that this was what she wanted? What she’d missed all those years?  
   And yet…  
   What bothered her was that it was all happening out of order. First came love, sure… for one of them. Then came the baby. Then… what? Maybe love, maybe another baby, maybe both. It might, or might not happen in that order. She didn’t even know if it  _should_  happen. Wasn’t she supposed to protect him? How did she reconcile her duty with what she wanted?  _Did_  she want a family? Did she deserve one, was a better question. Had she paid her dues yet? Was it even her place to ask?  
   She always refused to ask for this one thing, though she couldn’t have said why. This big, huge thing, that made life worth living, and she never asked for it.  
_I suppose I should just enjoy whatever comes my way, whenever it does, try not question it,_  she thought.  _Best not be greedy._  She leaned into him a little, a sigh barely stirring their daughter’s hair.  
   He “heard” her inner war, but he didn’t have any more answers than she did. He noticed the part of the nursery rhyme she left out, though: marriage. Did she not want that part? Or was marriage part of the “big, huge thing” she wouldn’t ask for?  
_Except she’s not the one who asks that part,_  he thought as quietly as he could. He meant what he told his parents: he was going to try to make this work… whatever  _this_  was.  
   But did that mean marrying her? His father certainly thought so.  
   “You don’t owe me anything, you know.” She said it so softly, he almost didn’t hear it. “All those kids I have… I’ve never been married.” She idly played with their daughter’s hair, needing something to do with the hand that wasn’t holding the baby.  
   Reflexively, before he could stop the words, he said “That’s not how I was raised.”  
   She shrugged into his armpit. “Doesn’t surprise me. It also doesn’t mean I’ll make the same mistake as… other women before me. Marrying ‘for the kids’ sake' rarely ends well.” She inserted a finger in their daughter’s mouth, broke the suction, and switched her to the other side. It was an easy, practiced motion that seemed to require little to no thought. Even if she hadn’t told him, he’d have known that she'd been a mother before she woke up in this bed.  
   He was torn between respect for the skill, and the realization that she really didn’t care about legalities. She’d done this enough times to become proficient, yet she’d never married their father(s).  
   Hurt flashed, and was gone, because he was right to question her morals. She didn’t rise to defend herself, except to say that on the contrary, it mattered too much.  
   He leaned back to look at her, keeping their daughter in his field of vision. “What do you mean, it matters too much?”  
   She stroked baby-fine hair from Menolly’s face. “Would you trust her life to a man you barely know? When divorce is such a messy process?”  
   She met his eyes, and there was the void, blacker than ever. “I’ve lost too many children by trusting the wrong people.” Her lower lip quivered, before she ducked her head to try and regain her composure, to prevent it from leaking to their daughter again. To that cherubic face, she spoke.  
   “It’s not that I don’t trust you, or that I think you’re… bad for her in any way. I just… don’t know how to let go.”  _Of either of you,_  she finished, where she thought he couldn’t hear.  
   He pulled her back to his chest. “Who says you have to let go of anyone?” He pressed his mouth to her knotted hair, hard enough to lose its shape in it.  
   “History,” she choked.  
   He tried to lighten the mood. “Sorry, that’s not my name. Guess you don’t have to let go, ever.”  
   She smiled a little. “Well, you’re going to have to let go when she’s done, or those pads are gonna be tangled in your chest hair, and stickier than her hands. I thought I got it all, punkin. Guess you’re getting a bath after Daddy, huh?” She waggled the finger that Menolly had gotten a firm grip on, which was now ever so slightly tacky to the touch.  
   His gut clenched, the way she said that word. She didn’t even think about it. It just came out, natural as you please. She had no trouble making him a part of their daughter’s life. It was only her own heart that she guarded so fiercely. He thought for the fifth, sixth, or millionth time, that he would never understand her. It would take an eternity.  
   But only one of them had an eternity to give… and it wasn’t him.  
   He kept forgetting that she would outlive him, by more years than he could fathom. He swallowed the knowledge, his throat pinching the bitter pill all the way down.  
_:You squeeze my shoulders any harder, and my wings are gonna pop out again,:_  she grumbled. He couldn’t tell if she’d heard any of his thoughts, but he hoped she hadn’t.  
   “Just do me a favor and wash her where I can see?” Her face, when it tilted up, was more naked and vulnerable in that moment than her torso. She was determined to wring every moment of happiness she could, from what she was given. She didn’t want to miss a thing.  
   “Of course I will,” he said with a smile. This once, when she was looking up at him, and the only distraction was in his line of sight, he saw the hitch in her breathing when he smiled at her. Her lashes fluttered down, but they couldn’t hide what he saw there. He glanced over at the screen, and he grinned wider. She could pretend to be calm and detached, but her heartbeat and breathing looked like an underwater landscape: irregular peaks and valleys that skipped haphazardly across the line.  
_:That’s cheating,:_  she scolded where the baby wouldn’t hear.  
_:I’ll take any advantage, trying to get a read on you,:_  he chuckled. He was unrepentant.  
   She picked Menolly up to burp her, glaring out the side of her eye at him. There wasn’t a hint of red to be seen. He just smirked down at her.  
   When they’d gotten a couple of tiny burps out of her, he went to fetch the baby bath one of the kids must have dropped off while they were sleeping. Angel thought about fixing her gown, but she was horribly smudged with all sorts of things. She hadn’t noticed that the last diaper change wasn’t quite fast enough, so there were wet spots on the gown itself, and possibly dried on her skin. There was also a bit of carrot puree that had soaked through near her belly button, though she’d no idea how or when it happened. Then there was the residue from the tiny fist on her bosom…  
   “Could you also fill that pink basin with warm water, and soap up a washcloth for me?”  
   He glanced over, and she was studiously looking at the baby, though her color was high. She still had the hospital gown around her waist.  
   “Maybe also see if there’s a clean shirt in the closet..?” she asked the tiny feet she was clapping together.  
   His Adam’s apple bobbed more than a middle school Halloween party. “Sure,” he wheezed.  
   He found everything she needed, but took his time bringing them to her. His composure was hard-won, and tenuous at best.  
   The basin he set on the movable tray table. He didn’t quite know what to do with the little tub. In the end, he turned on another light, set the bath on the floor, and sat next to it.  
   It’s a minor miracle that either girl got clean. She was watching his long, lean hands wash the chubby, splashing baby they’d apparently created together. He kept sneaking peeks at her absent-minded ablutions. She wasn’t looking where she was washing, which made it uncomfortably sensual. Having a woman watch you while she bathed was… distracting.  
   The only respite he got was when she asked the floor near his knee to close the curtain, so she could wash where she was sitting.  
   “It won’t be as clean as I’d like, with a catheter, but anything is better than feeling yucky.”  
   The floor probably agreed with her. He snagged the curtain from where he sat on the floor, one hand on the baby, and yanked it past his face as well as he could. She tugged from the bed, and between them, they got her enough privacy to finish her bath.  
   As he dried their daughter and put her in a ruffly blue concoction, he tried to ignore the quiet trickles of water on the other side of the curtain. Menolly took advantage of his distraction to drop the now chilly washcloth in his lap.  
   “What’s wrong? I’m done, can I help? Wait, no, forgot the gown. Are you okay?”  
   A gown was passed around the curtain, the arm bouncing with laughter. “I’ll take that as a yes. I’m dressed as far as I can on my own. I need help snapping the sleeve on the IV si--” she broke off, valiantly struggling to keep a straight face, and also not look directly at the wet spot.  
   “Here, hand her to me. Once you snap these, you can, ah, shower and change into dry clothes. Shards, I want a shower so badly…”  
   He handed her a clean, powdery smelling child, buttoned the snaps, and shuffled away to find clean clothes. It was debatable whose cheeks were redder.


	15. Tell Me No Lies

Angel gargled vigorously with mouthwash while he was in the shower. Her tongue tasted like a bottle that had fallen behind the crib, and then forgotten about for two weeks.  
  Then the nurse came in with more bone broth.  
  “Aw _come on,_ I _just_ got my breath to stop smelling like vulture burps!”  
  “If you're going to insist on breastfeeding, we're going to insist you replace those calories.” He looked down his nose at her. It was odd, seeing him without the angelic aura around his body, but he seemed to have recovered from being a temporary vessel--to the detriment of her taste buds...  
  “I've had like five of them already!”  
  _“Four._ This will make it five.”  
  Angel grumbled, whacking the bone broth powder against her other hand to settle it to the bottom, and ripping the package open in one clean tear.  
  “See? It's helping already. You couldn't open that this afternoon.”  
  Angel scowled, dumping the nasty stuff into the hot water with ill grace. “I bet I could even make it to the bathroom on my own.”  
  The nurse shook his head. “You'll have to wait to be evaluated in the morning. I saw you after OT, remember.”  
  Her scowl deepened. The taste of the fortified bone meal didn't help her mood. “Can I at least go back to regular broth? It tastes a helluva lot better than this stuff.”  
  “We'll see.”  
  Angel had to remember not to hunch her shoulders too much. She didn't want to scare the nurse into calling Roswell, or something. He wasn’t hosting Samandriel at the moment, so she had to avoid scaring the oh so normal _human_.  
   _Best not start thinking like that,_ she thought. Protective, not scornful...  
  “You chugged that like a champ. Here's the mouthwash. Wouldn't want your man to be tasting it on the back end, eh?”  
  She swished with far more aggression than was strictly necessary. “He's n--” She clutched her throat, unable to finish the word. Again.  
  “Sorry, I shouldn't tease you like that. More throat spray?”  
  Angel nodded, without noticing. She was so lost in thought that she barely registered the throat spray, or the change of her sheets. She heard his promise to change the fitted sheet in the morning, but she wasn’t really listening. She kept trying to say that one word, and it wouldn’t happen.  
  The nurse was, blessedly, able to keep a straight face, though his patient looked like a cat trying to lick peanut butter off the roof of their mouth.  
_:Hey, ah… Is it normal for my voice to stop working suddenly?:_ she finally asked. :Should we change my name to Ariel?:  
  Avriel dropped his forehead to the shower wall. It was hard enough, knowing what he knew; how little she wore, and how close she was. He didn't need her in his brain while he was naked.  
  :Angelic Restrictions will do that sometimes.:  
  Confusion wafted into the steam around him.  
  :Why would Heaven prevent me from saying “not”? Or “sick”, for that matter?:  
_:Oh, that.:_ He'd forgotten to tell her she couldn't lie, because it was so ingrained in his mind.  
  :Yes, that. I don't like having my words edited.:  
  He scrubbed the last of the shampoo out of his hair. He'd learned that the hard way: never have shampoo in your hair while using telepathy in the shower. His eyes tended to suffer for it.  
  He braced himself for her reaction before dropping the bombshell:  
  :You couldn't say that I'm sick, because I'm not. That would be a lie.:  
  There was a long pause, filled with faint echoes that made him think she might be talking to the baby, to keep her cool.  
  A thought occurred to him, then.  
_:Just out of curiosity, what were you talking about just now? I can't imagine why you wouldn't be able to say “not”. When does_ that word become a lie?:  
  She didn't answer. Her mind was a confused tangle that she probably couldn't even sort out, herself, so he left it... for the moment.  
  When he came out of the bathroom, he brought up something else that confused him. “While we’re on the subject of the strange, how did I wind up here in my nightshirt, _and_ jeans? I was in my pajamas when she ‘ported us.”  
  “That's a nightshirt?”  
  “I wear it with shorts… The ones I was wearing under my jeans. How did she..? I didn’t feel… I don’t know how that happened.”  
  “Well, you did need your wallet,” she pointed out. “If I was as hyper-rational as everyone says, I must’ve known you might, and… Actually yeah, how did she put pants on you, without you seeing, _and_ teleport across an ocean?” Her face was adorably puzzled. It took great effort not to kiss her wrinkled forehead. “Unless she nabbed the pants with one hand, and… I dunno, they materialized with you the way they’re designed to be worn..? Could it be that easy for her--I mean, me?”  
  “It did take longer than usual,” he remembered. “I put it down to the distance.”  
  She shook her head. “In the books, _blinking_ took the same amount of time, unless you were timing it. Since I doubt she--I went forward or back in time, maybe she had to manipulate your… uh… atoms? I don’t know, man. It’s late, and all this quantum physics hurts my head.”  
  He started moving the recliner, which took effort, so he thought at her instead. :You’re basing your calculations off of books, you know. We don’t know whether or not distance changes anything.:  
  “We also don’t know that Misty doesn’t know a real dragon, to get the details from. Sure, we’re rare, but were we always? Those books are older than I am. Maybe she met one before she wrote the books.” She shrugged, absently lifting the gown back up. “All I know is, my brain is tapped. She’s drifting off too, so maybe we should all go to bed, and tackle it in the morning. No, there’s a thing to turn that into a bed. Yeah. No? Other side. There! Now you don’t have to sleep sitting halfway up.”  
  He didn’t ask how she knew so much about the recliner beds in a hospital, because he wasn’t sure he could handle any more tragedy tonight. She’d obviously spent days, maybe weeks, by someone’s bedside, and his heart needed a break.  
  He found a spare blanket and stretched out on the narrow bed, with a pillow from the closet next to hers. Angel angled the bed back, but not flat, bent the leg portion, and stretched her legs out under the baby.  
  “You want me to put her in the car seat for you?”  
  She gently tugged Menolly up, onto her chest, rested her hands on the tiny back. She shook her head, a rose-tinted smile lighting her face. “She’s been cooped up too much. Let her stretch out for the night.”  
  His smile was equally fond. “She has a bassinet at home, you know.”  
  Her gut twisted at the words “at home”, but she refused to acknowledge it, or let it diminish her momentary joy. “It’ll be easier to feed her in the middle of the night this way.”  
  He couldn’t know whether or not she was sleeping through the night, because the dragon wouldn’t have thought it pertinent information. He had to take her word for it that the baby might wake up, because she rarely cried. He’d never been disturbed in the middle of the night, even when she was a newborn.  
  Besides, it gave her time to bond with their daughter. He saw right through the flimsy excuse.  
  :It’s not an excuse, you know. Co-sleeping has proven benefits. Something about my heartbeat and breathing regulating hers, I don’t remember.:  
His smile grew. :I should know better than to question your methods, by now. You’ve always got some reason, or fact, that makes me feel silly for not thinking of it first.:  
Her “voice” grew serious. _:On the contrary, you should question everything. Keep me grounded, ‘kay? I don’t… I don’t think anything can kill me, if I… went rogue. Make sure I remember why, and how, and everything in between. You have to, because I can’t remember. I think I know why I keep losing my memory, too.:  
_  His head snapped up. He asked what she knew, but she’d already fallen asleep. Jet-lagged, in a room he’d dimmed before lying down, with two sleeping people, he didn’t stand a chance. Despite the answers dangling in front of his face, her inability to tell him rendered them moot. He fell into a heavy slumber, not long after she did.

   When he woke, she was just getting back in bed.  
   “Does your nurse know you were out of bed?” he asked. His voice was rougher than usual, his body stiff, having just woken from ten hours in one position.  
   “I should hope so! She had to take the catheter out before I could go to the bathroom.”  
   His eyes were fuzzy and confused. “Why didn’t you just leave it in, take it out after?”  
   She pleated the blanket at her waist, staring into the crisp folds. “What I had to do didn’t require a catheter.”  
   When his brain caught up to her words, he decided it was as good a time as any to sit up. That, of course, triggered his own need to use the bathroom.  
   “You might want to use the one down the hall,” she warned.  
   He nodded at the floor. He didn’t change out of his pajamas, since this set came with pants. He just slipped on his shoes and went out to find the guest restroom.  
   By the time he got back, she was feeding the baby mushy peas. She wore a bib over her nightgown, but he still worried about soiling it.  
   She set her chin on her half-clothed shoulder when he said as much. “She already needs to change out of her nightgown, so why put her in a day outfit before potentially getting it messy?”  
   He shook his head at the floor. “There you go again,” he chuckled.  
   “But if you hadn’t asked, you wouldn’t have learned anything,” she pointed out, spooning another mouthful into a very happy baby. “If it’s your turn, you’ll know to feed her before putting on clean clothes. You know the old adage: the only stupid question is the one you don’t ask. Something like that, yeah? Maybe I’ll remember once the coffee kicks in.” She made a face at him in between bites. “It’s decaf, so I don’t have high hopes.”  
   “Why--oh right, nursing.”  
   She wrinkled her nose at their daughter, touched it to her green-smeared one. “The things I do for you, kiddo…”  
   The baby giggled and patted her cheeks, thereby smearing them with green goo.  
   “Thanks for that,” she said dryly. She made a game of it, rubbing her cheeks clean on the bib and blowing raspberries in the baby’s neck folds. Menolly squealed happily, kicking her little legs in her mama’s ribs.  
   “I will avenge thee!” he mock-roared, wrapping his arms around them and blowing loud, prickly raspberries on Angel’s neck, though she tried to duck out of it.  
   “Aiee! Help! He’ll huff, and puff, and blooow me down! Save meee!” Angel dramatically swayed out of his grasp, pretending to swoon on top of the baby. She didn’t put any weight on her, of course. It was all theater, and Menolly was loving every minute of it.  
   Someone chuckled in the doorway, and the adults froze mid-combat.


	16. Meet the Parents... Again

  “See, honey? You didn’t need to help him avenge anyone.”  
  Angel yelped and buried her head firmly in the blanket to the side of the baby. She was a frightful mess, and she knew it.  
  “Mom! Dad! Why didn’t you tell me you guys were coming?”  
  “Because you’d have told us not to.”  
   _:He’s not wrong…:  
_   _:Yeah, but a little warning would’ve been nice,:_ he grumbled where they wouldn’t hear. She heartily agreed. He tied the gown behind her neck, hoping the solid food would hold Menolly until his parents left.  
   _:Thanks. No help for the rest, though.:  
_  And so the elder Kaplans’ first impression of Angel as a human was greasy hair, clumsily rebraided this morning; a thin film of pea puree on her face, splotches of it on her nice, clean gown, and a baby patting more on her hands in a silent demand for more.  
  Shelly heartily approved.  
  Afraid to speak, lest she expose her missing teeth, Angel focused on her daughter as much as she could. She heard the hugs, his parents telling him not to worry if baby food got on their clothes. She felt their approach toward the bed, and her shoulders hunched. She had to concentrate very hard to keep her wings tucked in, because her instinct was to mantle over the baby. She had nothing to fear from these lovely people, and yet her eyes took on a nervous ochre tint.  
  Shelly subtly put a hand on her husband’s arm to stop him from getting too close. She hadn’t forgotten that this was still a dragon. She knew that posture from personal experience, what it meant. She couldn’t see the yellow glow because of the sunlight, but it wouldn’t have surprised her to see it.  
  “Hello,” she said, projecting a calm aura to soothe the frazzled dragoness on the bed. “I don’t think we’ve properly met.”  
  The younger blonde looked up, her face puzzled. “Have we not?” She looked to Avi for confirmation.  
  “It was after you hit your head, yes.”  
  She visibly shuddered, and the skin on her back rippled briefly. She kept her wings in, which raised Shelly’s respect another notch.  
  “I’m sorry you had to see me like that,” she said to the spoon in her hand. She dipped it in the jar, only to find it empty of excuses to avoid eye contact. “I’ve heard what she was like… what _I_ was like.” She set the jar and spoon on the tray, and got to work cleaning her daughter’s face as best she could.  
  Into the heavy silence, Mike quietly observed “I see you two are getting along better.”  
  The bony shoulders drooped another notch, but she didn’t say anything. Without conscious thought, Avi rubbed her back. She felt crowded, though his parents were a good two paces away. He could feel her shoulderblades shifting restlessly.  
  The old urge to fly away was still there, it seemed.  
  He gripped the shoulder nearest to him. “It’ll be a long road, but yes. We’re getting to know each other better, now that she’s got… well, most of her memories back.”  
  “Not all of them?” Shelly asked. She remembered how those lost memories had bothered her son before.  
  “The human mind has finite capacity for knowledge,” Angel intoned in an odd, hollow voice that also seemed to echo from far away. It wasn’t Gabriel’s voice, he knew that. “Periodic memory wipes will be necessary over the centuries. You wouldn’t like what would happen without them.”  
  He ducked down to look at her eyes for clues, but they weren’t any help. It was… disconcerting to look into those emotionless orbs. They weren’t precisely Spellcasting Grey, or Angel Blue, as he thought of them. They were mirrored, like a cat’s eyes in a flash of light. They were every color in the spectrum, and no color at all.  
  It hurt his head to try to pierce through the mirror, so he turned away. He shrugged at his parents, as confused by this new facet of his dragon as they were. His mother shrugged back.  
  “Remember for me, Avriel.”  
  She went as limp as a doll, so quickly he almost didn’t keep her from falling on the baby.  
  He’d just laid her head on the pillows when her eyes blinked open. Her brow crinkled. “How did I… What happened?”  
  “Whatever it was, the baby doesn’t seem concerned,” Shelly said.  
  They looked at Menolly, and sure enough, she was sitting in her car seat, calm as you please. Maybe more calm than normal, but they couldn’t be sure what that meant.  
  “Is anyone going to tell me what happened?” She asked the room in general, but she was looking at her Bonded for answers.  
  He took his time working it out. “I don’t know exactly what it was, but something was talking through you. It said I was supposed to remember everything you forget, I think.”  
  “It also said you have to forget things, _over the centuries._ Don’t suppose anyone’s going to explain that part to us?” Mike asked.  
  “I don’t think we can, no.” Her eyes flicked to Avi’s for courage. “But you already know that dragons live for a long time. I wasn’t born a dragon, so I don’t have the right… brain? Humans weren’t meant to live much beyond a hundred years old.” Her gaze dropped to her lap. “Besides, my brain was already damaged before I got turned into a dragon. You take a brain that can’t remember what it had for lunch yesterday, make it work beyond the normal operating parameters of a healthy brain… Things were bound to slip through the cracks.” She blew out a breath, almost a laugh. “Maybe it’s like turning a device off, and back on--except it’s a brain.”  
  “Well, at least this time, it only lasted a couple of seconds.” He forgot, for a moment, who was in the room with them. Long enough to press a firm kiss to her temple.  
  While he’d forgotten, Angel had not.  
  Neither of them had noticed that Shelly was sneaking photos of the three of them surreptitiously. She angled the phone so the baby couldn’t be seen beyond the car seat. She was creating false memories, in a way. The way it was shot, this could have been the day the baby was born. People were bound to ask to see photos, later in Menolly’s life. She may want to see them, herself.  
  The way her son doted over the girl lent credence to the images. She just wished Angel would look a little happier. _Oh well, maybe they’ll see an exhausted new mother,_ she thought. When he kissed her temple, Shelly was quick on the draw. Anything they could put in an album later would be useful.  
  Mike cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable. “There _is_ something that will last longer than a few seconds, son. Something we spoke about before you went on tour?”  
  Avi’s shoulders tensed. He straightened, reluctantly faced his father. “I still haven’t told her, you know. I don’t know how.”  
  Angel thought he meant her. Her shoulders tightened, as though a weight was about to land on them.  
  “You said I had until I got home. What happened to that, anyway? Not that I mind, but why are you guys here?”  
  His parents exchanged a look that meant something to them, but left the younger pair in the dark.  
  “You didn’t think I’d do the right thing, did you?” he asked, hurt in his voice. Angel’s hand, oxygen monitor and all, snaked out and gripped his, in mute support.  
  “It’s not that,” his dad said, a bit too quickly.  
  “We just thought you might need a little help to do it, that’s all,” his mom soothed.  
  Angel squeezed his hand, offering what aid she could. He squeezed back.  
  “We talked about it, your father and I. We could only think of one way to solve the problem.”  
  The Bonded pair braced for the worst, though neither of them could think of a worst case scenario.  
  “You said you were going to try to make this work, which meant letting your girlfriend down easily,” Mike began.  
  “But she didn’t know that a dragon could turn into a human,” Shelly continued.  
  “Mom, no! You _didn’t!”_  
   She ducked her head. "I did."


	17. A Decent Proposal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All right, y'all wanted a happy ending. Here's the beginning of a happy ending.

“It was the only thing we could come up with. It was that, or have her memory erased, and I won’t have that on my conscience. Not if I could prevent it.” Shelly stood tall and proud, which, if you knew her well, was a clear indication that she’d Shifted recently.  
  Angel might not remember what Shifting did to his mother’s lifespan, but Avi did. The knowledge haunted his eyes, and was reflected in hers.  
   _:I’ll trust you not to make my sacrifice meaningless, my son.:  
_His chin dropped to his chest. _:Yes, ma’am.:  
_  She stepped forward to hug her boy. He hung on to his mother as tightly as he dared, a few tears dotting her shirt.  
  Angel tentatively touched his back, and even the baby waved her arms at him. Shelly surprised her by dropping a hand down his back, to grip her fingers with surprising strength. It was the younger woman’s hand that cracked, but she wouldn’t let on.  
  Avi flexed his hand against his mother’s shoulder, trying to ease the ache whose cause took a moment to sink in. He drew back enough to tell his mother to kindly not break his dragon.  
  Shelly let go, and they all chuckled.  
  “I’ve heard of an ice breaker, but I didn’t know it could be literal,” she said. “ _Gracious,_ your hands are cold!”  
  Angel sniffled a laugh. “Yeah, ‘cold hands, warm heart’ is what they say. Been hearing it my whole life.” She picked up the baby and snuggled her close. “May you never inherit Mama’s circulation, huh? Hmm, let’s see…” She pressed one chubby hand to her lips. “Nope, warm as a summer day.” She gave it a loud kiss, which made the baby gurgle happily.  
   _That’s definitely a keeper!_ Shelly took several photos, heart melting when her son checked the tiny “feetsies” for warmth. His beard tickled the sensitive baby toes so much, she giggled until she got the hiccups.  
  She might have become upset by them, except the adults all thought it was the cutest thing they’d seen all day. She beamed up at the grown-ups, hiccuping merrily for a whole minute. When there wasn’t another one to be heard, she got a tiny frown line between her brows.  
  “All gone,” Angel chirped, keeping her voice as light as it was when there were hiccups. She didn’t want to teach her to do things for attention. She made a fuss over Menolly for another full minute, as a sort of reward for not faking hiccups, but also to show her that they loved her, even without the funny noises.  
  “Okay, you’ve had enough fun. Gramma’s turn,” Shelly decreed.  
  There was a strange reluctance to hand her over, but she did relinquish her hold on the baby. Shelly flashed her son a questioning look.  
   _:Past trauma. I’ll explain later… what I know, anyway.:  
_  She nodded at the baby, making faces at her, to try to counter her mother’s anxiety.  
  “So,” Mike said, drawing out the word to get their attention. “Back to the matter at hand…”  
  It was arguable who reached for whose hand first. They tensed at the same time.  
  “Does she know, then?”  
  Shelly blew raspberries into the baby’s tummy. “All she knows is that the mother of your child can become human.” She looked him square in the eye. “I didn’t do the heavy lifting, no.”  
  “You don’t have--” Angel started to say.  
  Avriel pivoted on his heel and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Don’t say that. I heard you the first time.” He squeezed the hand he still held, just shy of the point of pain. “You’re wrong.” He dropped his hand from her face and sat on the bed, facing her. The white imprint his fingers left gave him momentary guilt that faded as fast as his mark did.  
  He took up her other hand, flipped both so her tattoos showed. Her eyes sparked a warning he recklessly ignored. She saw his intent, fought him every inch of the way. But she hadn’t regained her strength. What little she had, she’d given to the baby.  
  “Don’t,” she begged, her voice husky from their silent battle.  
  He kissed each wrist in turn; her silent, futile rage burning at him from the inside, warring with the passion she couldn’t fight, any more than she could fight him.  
  “I have to try.” His eyes pleaded with her, asking for something she didn’t want to give.  
  Tears spilled from angry Christmas colored eyes. “Of course you do. There’s just one big, huge problem. You. Don’t. Know. Me. I don’t know you. That’s not a very good place to start.”  
  His jaw set, more determined than she’d seen him, with her current memories. “I know enough.”  
  Her teeth ground together, almost audibly. “No, you _don’t!_ You've got this… this idealized image of me, from when I was _literally_ an angel--or part of one. You don't see the skin covered in scars, the teeth I don't have, the curves that shouldn't be there.” She yanked one hand free to hold up fingers that had been twisted and stunted by years of being crammed against drawing paper, and wrapped around pencils. “You don't see _me!”_ The weathered, crooked hand shoved weakly at his chest.  
  “You're wrong.” He covered her hand, trapped it against his heart. Her head jerked back warily. “I saw you from the beginning. The outside wasn't what I liked, it was your… well, for lack of a better word, your soul.”  
  “Would this be the same soul that was pushing you away, marching along like a military general? The soul you _shoved_ back into this body, because it was too _alien?”_ She gripped a fistful of his shirt, shaking him for emphasis.  
  “That wasn't _you!_ ”  
  “Wasn't it? How do you _know?_ ” She leaned closer, nearly nose to nose with him.  
  “The way you reacted to Kapa’s training. How you are with the baby. The willingness to give up your own life for another. The strength that's been constant throughout, the stubbornness-- which may be an issue in the future. You're too damned stubborn to _accept_ what's happened, or that you might _actually_ deserve it. I've seen your soul, and it's beautiful.”  
  Her shock at hearing him swear only gave her momentary pause. “If you knew what it took for me to become strong, and independent, you'd know why it's so hard to give it up.”  
  “So tell me.”  
  She sat there, hands gone lax, longer than he liked. “To make a long story short, I've found that I'm… prone to becoming codependent on another human being, when given the opportunity. To be told that I'm literally _bound_ to someone…”  
  She snatched her hands back, clapped them together, wrists up; as though the tattoos were handcuffs. He winced. “It's a bit of a setback, to say the least. How do I keep _me_ separate from _you?_ You never did say, the last time I asked. Got any ideas?” She glared at him, her wrists now “bound” in front of her chest.  
  “You love me.” He covered her hands with his own, over her madly beating heart. _“Try_ to deny it!”  
  Anger briefly flashed, before she slumped in defeat, her chin resting on his knuckles. “You know I can’t do that.” Two tears splashed onto the skin of his outer wrists.  
  She was so thoroughly beaten that she forgot to hold her wings in. They snapped out, one of them glancing off the IV bag. She winced, but didn’t cry out. She set her forehead on his knuckles, the nape of her neck exposed.  
  The symbolism wasn’t lost on him. His teeth ground together, at war with himself.  
  “Would it really be that bad, married to me?”  
  His words, the pain behind them, snapped her out of her bubble of misery faster than a bucket of cold water. Her head whipped up with supernatural speed; a remnant of her contact with Gabriel. Her hands flipped around to grip his, right where they were against her bosom. “Of _course_ not! It’s not _you_ I’m worried about!”  
  “And since she can’t lie, can we get on with this? I don’t know how much longer your mother can keep the baby quiet.” Mike was doing admirably well, dealing with his first glimpse of a dragon half-Shifted. His voice barely trembled.  
  The younger parents’ heads turned toward their daughter simultaneously. In this one tiny, adorable thing, they were united. They wore matching expressions of apology. Both yearned to hold her, and make it all better.  
  Mike made shooing motions. “Hurry up, would you?”  
  They even laughed the same way. “Not exactly romantic, is it?” he chuckled.  
  She sighed. “It never is.”  
  His face set in an unrecognizable mask. “Hell with that.”  
  While she was still reeling with shock that he’d sworn, _again_ , he hauled her to his chest by their clasped hands and kissed her senseless. Everything, everyone else, faded into the background.  
  And this time, she let him in. That first contact sent a jolt clear down to her toes, and she was distantly certain the readings on the monitor would have a nurse bolting in at any minute. But those thoughts were far, far away, in a body she’d left behind. She was also faintly positive she’d just exploded into atoms that didn’t know how to be a person anymore.  
  They remembered what they were supposed to look like, when someone tapped on their shoulders. Two souls plopped back into their respective bodies quite abruptly. It took awhile for eyes to focus again, brains to click into gear. They were too stunned to even be embarrassed.  
  Until the world slid into focus again, and Mike was standing there trying to frown at them, and only half succeeding. Then they wore matching blushes.  
  Still in a daze, Avriel slid off the bed, onto one knee, keeping hold of her hands. He said her name--her real name--as though it were the sweetest sound he’d ever heard. “Would you do me the honor of being my wife?”  
  A small box was pressed into his shoulderblade, where Angel couldn’t see it. He let go of one hand and reached behind him to take it. To her, it would have seemed like he took it from a back pocket.  
  Her eyes, large and not quite focused yet, widened further when he flicked the box open with his thumb and held it out. It didn’t matter what the ring looked like. The fact that he had one at all spoke louder than a hundred choirs.  
  She couldn’t have said a word if her life depended on it. Shock, and the aftereffects of the kiss, rendered her mute.  
  Fortunately, she didn’t have to use her voice. She nodded, once, eyes filled to the brim. :As you wish,: she said, a wealth of emotion that couldn’t be conveyed with mere vocal cords singing accompaniment.  
  He let go of her hand long enough to take the ring out of the box and slide it over her fragile, slightly crooked finger. She smiled, even as tears left gilded tracks down her cheeks.  
  He stood to give her one quick, solid kiss to seal the deal. It was all he dared, with the company in the room.


	18. Holy Matrimony

“Now that that’s settled, should I fetch the Chaplain?” Mike asked.  
   Shelly saw the objections forming already. “I hate to point this out, but your daughter is already six months old. As the old cliche goes, ‘what will people say?’ You do have a career to think about,” she gently chided.  
   “No.”  
   “What?” both parents asked.  
   “I’m never doing this again,” she said to their joined hands. Her words meant more to Avi than they did to his parents. They hit him with the force of a full-grown dragon.  
   “I’ll have it done properly, or not at all. Something small, preferably outdoors, or in a quaint little church. I do mean  _ small _ . No more than twenty people.”  
   This sent his mother into a tizzy that confused the baby. “Our family  _ alone _ has more than twenty people in it, not including  _ yours! _ Who are we supposed to leave out?”  
   A wave of faces flitted across her mind, probably from his brain. She wasn’t thrilled with that level of sharing; particularly when it drowned her in a flood of information. Angel’s face sagged with fear and resignation. Fear of a large wedding, and the endless possibilities for codependency. She was resigned to being uncomfortable on her wedding day. She knew how important family was, to them.  
   “I don’t do well with crowds,” she protested weakly. She sounded like a lost child who’d been plunked in the middle of a crowded, unfamiliar city. She wasn’t overly fond of cities either, but she wasn’t going to tell  _ them _ that.  
   “That’s going to be a problem, given his career,” Mike pointed out.  
   Angel shook her head, a hint of steel in her jaw. “Backstage is claustrophobic, but quiet. If dragons really have extrasensory perception, I won’t have to go where the crowds are, unless there’s a problem. At that point, fight or flight overrides social anxiety. You don’t have to worry about me being able to do my  _ job _ .”  
   Mike had the grace to blush at her inference.  
   Shelly bristled, having so recently taken dragon form, but she maintained outward calm for the baby’s sake. Her eyes didn’t spark red, being too far removed from angelic bloodlines, but Angel was dragon enough to get the drift. Later, she would wonder if it was subconscious recognition of pheromones, or some sort of electrical energy thing; but in the moment, she was a younger dragon in the presence of an angry elder dragon. If she’d been fully Shifted, her earflaps, crests, and wings would have hugged her scales in submission. All she had were wings, which tucked in close to her shoulders. It was itchy where the ties were, but she didn’t acknowledge the discomfort.  
   The downside to losing her memories was, she had none of her hard-won confidence. She was once again the lonely fangirl who didn’t know her own power. She could crush the elder dragon with a flick of her talons, not that she  _ would.  _ But she could, and she didn’t know it. She did not yet believe that she could do more than make it to the bathroom and back on her own, so she gave in without another whimper.  
   It took great effort for Avriel to let her face this trial on her own. He wanted so badly to sweep her to his chest, shield her from the world, but he knew it would do more damage than good. She needed to be strong enough to face horrors that were so bad, the Angel he knew didn’t think he should remember them.  
   But, being himself, and having just proposed to her, he squeezed her hands in silent support. Being the stubborn angel-dragon that she was, she didn’t cling or weep. She returned the pressure, with no more or less strength than he gave her.  
   “May I propose a compromise, pardon the pun?” Mike asked, sensing the disturbance, without fully understanding its nuance.  
   Angel shrugged, wings rustling listlessly. She rolled her shoulders absently, trying to ease the itch of raw skin on rough fabric.  
   Avi sat next to his new fiancee and nodded for his father to continue.  
   “We can do both. The Chaplain can marry you now, so the dates match up better, and we can have whoever you want do the ceremony, since it’s more of a celebration than legalities, if that makes sense.”  
   She drooped further, but didn’t object. She’d go along with whatever he wanted. Not because she had to, but because she could see the logic of it. Not only did it look better on paper, but it gave them time to plan whatever fairytale wedding they imagined their son would have.  
_    :It’s not just my wedding,: _ he objected.  
_    :This may surprise you, but I gave up on the idea of marriage years ago. The extent of my wishes have already been given. Somewhere beautiful, open, ancient. An old church on a mountaintop, or a beach somewhere warm, I don’t really care. We could get married out in the sage and stone, and that’d be just fine.:  
_    The way she said “fine” wasn’t the modern usage. It felt more like “fine linen”, or “fine dining”. The more he thought about a wedding at home, among the sequoias perhaps, the more wistful he grew. He’d always wanted to film a music video there, but it was too personal for him to bring the whole band into what he affectionately thought of as his woods. He didn’t own them, but it felt like they owned a part of him.  
   The fact that she knew this affirmed his decision. There was a… chime? When she said the last sentence, it just felt… right; for both of them, he could tell.  
   “All right, you two. I may not be able to hear what you’re saying, but that doesn’t make it any less rude. Have you come to a decision?”  
   His cheek twitched to have his mother echo his own word. He nudged Angel’s mind, a wordless query. She mentally shrugged.  _ :I said I’d go along with you on it. I can see the logic, even if I don’t like it on an emotional level.:  
_    “We’ll do what’s best, even if it isn’t what we wanted.” He watched his Bonded out of the corner of his eye, squeezed her hands once.  
   Esther walked through the door with a middle-aged woman, which stunned everyone except Shelly. Even she was surprised, however, to see the rest of the band file in after, hatchlings on their shoulders.  
   “Sorry, but they insisted,” she said. To the Chaplain, it would seem she meant the band members, but the little family in the hospital room knew who she meant: their children.  
   The three hatchlings who hadn’t seen Angel, and the three humans who’d never seen Angel as anything other than a dragon, gawked with varying degrees of subtlety.  
   The Chaplain, having entered first, saw none of it. She strode in, shook the engaged couple’s hands (which meant letting go with one, though neither wanted to relinquish their hold on the other).  
   “I’ve been apprised of the situation by your sister, mister Kaplan. I’ll not lecture the two of you on propriety, since you obviously see that your children need a unified parental structure.”  
   They managed to keep straight faces, though some of the band could not. “Yes ma’am,” they chimed in unison.  
   “While we’re at it, would you object to having your youngest child baptized, or would you prefer your own officiant for that?”  
   Wide blue eyes, bluer than he’d ever seen, met equally wide hazel eyes. They both sent a wordless question across, then smiled.  
   “We don’t know yet,” he said.  
   The byplay caused more than a few smiles behind the pastor. They were all friends here, and it was clear that something good was about to happen.  
   “Mom? Dad? Any input?”  
   “With respect, I’d rather our church handle that part,” Mike said.  
   “Fair enough. Shall we begin?”  
_    :I don’t suppose you’ve got more rings in your pockets, do you?:  
_ _    :I’ve had your sister pick up a pair, yes.:  
_    He swallowed visibly, but took Angel’s other hand and nodded.  
   “Can you stand?”  
   Angel swung her legs out from behind Avi, jaw set and wings tucked in. She was a bit sore, because she’d never yanked them up into her back so fast in her life, but when the door opened, there was no choice.  
   Just as there was no choice, for her, but to stand, sore and tired, for her own wedding. If she leaned against the bed, well, she couldn’t be blamed. She would’ve felt horribly exposed and vulnerable, but Esther brought her a lovely white shawl that, she whispered, could double as a nursing shield later. For now, it covered the horrid hospital gown that, thank God, had been changed recently. There was no hope for her hair, or any of the rest.  
   The Chaplain, to her credit, had a ceremony prepared for such an occasion. She spoke of unity in all things, and praised their choice in the oddest way:  
   “For you to wed in the most extreme of sickness, you have already passed the first test of any relationship. When you say ‘in sickness and in health’, you can be confident that it is true.”  
   No one could argue her logic. Their eyes were red-rimmed, their cheeks sunken. His hair was damp, hers oily. He was in pajamas, she in her hospital gown. No trace of makeup or artifice disguised them from each other.   
   It was the most pure version of themselves, the Chaplain asserted. They could move forward knowing that it wasn’t the makeup, or the hairstyle, or the clothes, that the other person loved.  
   They thought they’d run out of tears, but they were wrong. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room among the adults, and most of the hatchlings had a shine in their eyes. Menolly beamed up at everyone.  
   Gabriel, hidden even from his friend, wept openly, and without shame. Samandriel didn’t chastise or tease him for it. He was more interested in the proceedings than his brother’s reaction to them.  
   Esther’s hands were steady when she gave them their rings, but theirs were not. His long, gentle hands trembled as they slid the engraved silver band over her knuckle. She had to close her hand to keep it on, as thin as she’d become. Her own fingers, leathery and worn, somehow managed to look graceful slipping on the wider, matching ring with two fingers. Her index finger, ring finger, and pinkie hovered over the procession like guardian angels--even though the bulky oxygen monitor covered one of them.  
   When the ring was on, those tiny fingers flicked in a gesture he knew quite well. He still didn’t know whether she did it consciously, but they  __ definitely needed a Bubble of Silence when they were declared man and wife. He doubted either of them would’ve remembered to cast any sort of spell when they sealed it with a kiss.  
   Whether it was the emotion of the moment, or some sort of supernatural reaction to a religious rite, that kiss carried more import than either of them were prepared for. She didn’t remember her tie to the spiritual realm, so it caught her unawares. If they’d been asked to describe it, neither could have done so. Angel was a writer, but all she could’ve said was that it wasn’t physical in the least. She barely felt his lips on hers. It was more intimate than anything she’d experienced in her long years.  
   It wouldn’t frighten her until much later.


	19. Painful Goodbyes

Congratulations broke out, which eventually snapped them out of their temporary spiritual union. The baby was passed around, which Angel kept a wary eye on. Shelly made a mental note to ask her son about it again, when they had a moment to themselves.  
   Esther told her brother, when she hugged him, that she bought him some more time with his girlfriend. “I told her the baby was sick, too,” she murmured.  
   “Thanks,” he said into her shoulder.  
   “What are sisters for?” she chuckled, not as quietly. The others could reasonably assume she was referring to the wedding arrangements.  
   Angel was overwhelmed, meeting the entire band, _and_ the rest of her children. She couldn’t go far without unplugging her IV, which would alert the nurse, so she had to stay by the bed and let them come to her. With so many tall people, it was often hard to keep an eye on the baby. She tried very hard to trust the impression she’d gotten of these people.  _They wouldn’t take her away,_  she repeated in her head.  
 _:No, they wouldn’t. Relax, I can see her from here. Scott is making the cutest faces at her.:_  
   Angel really wanted to see, but Kevin was just too tall. He seemed to be more familiar with her than the others, which was odd, to her.   
   "I'm happy to see you back to yourself. You know, even if you can't remember anything, you just look... I don't know, more at peace? Take good care of him for me, 'kay?" He hugged her like he'd known her for years, his eyes suspiciously moist.  
   She was trying to listen to him, but it was hard not to look around him to see what Scott was doing.   
   Avi heard her wish, and pulled out his phone. It stayed in his hand until the nurse came in to take her vitals. Knowing he would show her the photos later, she was able to focus on Kevin better.  
   “Okay, you’ve had your fun,” the nurse said. She had to say it twice, because Angel couldn’t see her come in. The Bubble of Silence needed to be taken down before anyone could hear that they were being shooed out.  
   The band took their time saying goodbye, trickling out more slowly than the nurse wanted. She scowled as sternly as she could while holding the thermometer under Angel’s tongue, but it was all for show. She saw the new rings on her patient’s hand when she reached up to hold her own thermometer.  
   Dan was understandably confused by the people filing out of Angel’s room. He knew who they were, of course. Having been exposed to Angel and her unique dragon eyes, he could see the hatchlings on their shoulders. He didn’t know they were her children, but they were the first dragons he’d ever seen. He was forgiven by most of them for gawking like a country bumpkin.  
   Angel and Menolly were both beyond overstimulated, by the time the room emptied of everyone except Dan and the Kaplans. Angel was glad of the relative respite, pun intended.  
   Dan hugged Angel, questions brimming almost visibly. He caught sight of the rings, when her arms lowered from the hug. His broad face tightened with suppressed pain.  
   “These are Avi's parents, and that’s his sister Esther,” Angel said, awkwardly gesturing to the elder couple and their daughter, behind him. He nodded at each, shook their hands, in turn. When he plucked at one of her braids, his thick fingers shook so bad that it was hard to separate the plaits.  
   “They didn’t make you do this, did they?” he asked near her ear, while unraveling her hair--and her fragile composure.  
   “Sort of,” she murmured back. “It’s all happening so fast. I’m nervous, maybe even scared. Promise you’ll keep coming back?”  
   “You know I can’t promise, but I’ll try.” In a normal voice, he bemoaned the state of her hair as he brushed it. “Aren’t they letting you in the bathroom yet?”  
   She forced a laugh. The roughness was more pronounced, from all the talking she’d been doing. “Yeah, but it’s only been a day. It’ll be awhile before they let me in the shower.”  
   The nurse entered the numbers in the computer, and told her OT should be in within the hour. Angel didn't groan, or complain. She merely nodded, temporarily foiling Dan's unsteady weaving. The nurse left with a fond smile on her face, none the wiser.  
   Kapa told his family that his siblings took the band home. He wouldn’t say that they’d teleported, in front of Dan, but it was understood. Angel was sad that she wouldn't get to properly meet the rest of her children, but she knew that the band was probably jetlagged.  
   The Kaplans caught up on personal things while Dan braided her hair. When she was neat and tidy, Esther handed Dan the baby. She didn’t know he was anything more than a friend. She was a proud aunt showing off her niece.  
   Daniel’s eyes met Angel’s, over her daughter’s head. She knew what he was thinking: This could’ve been their future, had she not become a Vessel on that fateful night.  
   But if she hadn’t volunteered, she could never have borne him a child.  
   Avi understood their haunted eyes, though no one else did. His family pretended not to notice when the baby fell asleep in Dan’s arms, and Angel teared up.  
   Then his phone rang. He sighed heavily and handed the sleeping child to her father. He hugged Angel one last time. She held him extra tight, asked him, again, to return tomorrow. “You know how scary new things are,” she whimpered into his thick neck. Her arms trembled on his broad shoulders.  
   He didn’t answer her, but he did answer his phone. He waved an apology, and darted out the door before talking to the person on the other end.  
   Angel was painfully certain she would never see her best friend again.


	20. Them Bones, Them Bones, Them Dragon Bones

Angel flopped back against the pillows, gasping for air. Her face was flushed, braids awry, and the monitor looked like a Martian landscape. The ties at her nape had come undone again. For a solid minute, her labored breathing was the only sound in the room. He let her rest that long.  
  “Ready for round two?” Avriel asked.  
  Angel groaned and rolled her head toward the window. It was all she had the energy for.  
  “Don't worry, you can do it lying down.”  
  Esther snickered behind him.  
  Avi blushed, unable to look at any of his family members. “That's not what I meant! I was talking about Shifting…”  
  Angel chuckled wearily.  
  “You may as well know that you won't transform today, okay?”  
  Angel was too tired to argue that she’d already figured the wings out.  
  “First, we meditate. If you're lucky, you'll See the notches and hinges on your bones. That's the first step. You can't stretch muscles and joints, if you don't know you have them.” He was repeating the same words his mother had said when she taught him.  
  “The muscles I know of are too tired to stretch, anyway.”  
  “That's why I thought now would be a good time to practice. Your body is exhausted, so maybe your mind can focus better. Does that make sense?”  
  “Yeah, sort of.”  
  “I can show you what to feel for, how to center yourself. Your body knows what it can do. It's your mind that you’ve got to convince. You figured one part out by accident. The rest might not be so easy.”  
  He patted her shoulder, self-conscious in front of his family.  
  “It takes time, and practice. For you, it may go faster, because you have more free time than I do; or it could take longer, because you’re still in recovery. We won’t know until you try.”  
  “Nothing worth having is easy,” Angel growled.  
  Shelly laughed. “That’s what I said.”  
  He lifted her chin gently. She blushed, resisted the urge to pull away. They were married now; she had no reason to shy away from affection. It was an old habit she’d have to break, if they were going to get along. The past two days had shown her that he was as affectionate as he seemed. There would be a lot of little touches like this to get used to.  
  “You'll need more patience than ever before, Angel. The programming is here.” He tapped her forehead with two fingers. “You just have to find it.”  
  She couldn't argue with his logic, so she followed the guided meditation he learned from his mother, trying to see her own bones. They sat cross-legged, facing each other. He sat straight and tall, while she had to raise the head of the bed and lean into it. Shelly gave advice here and there, as she saw the need.  
  Esther went home soon after, to sleep for a week, as she said.  
  He was right, in that she was too tired to get restless, but she had to work twice as hard to relax. Everything was one big ache.  
  She was just beginning to get frustrated, when she Saw a tiny latch in her elbow. Her head cocked to one side, though her eyes were closed.  
  She extended the arm by the window out straight, between Avi and the machinery, so she wouldn’t hit anyone if her hunch was correct. What if I twist and flick my arm like this?  
The newlyweds yelped almost simultaneously, and clutched their knuckles. That is to say that Angel tried to, but one arm was now twice as long as the other.  
  Everyone stared at her arm, with varied reactions: Shelly was proud, and a tad nostalgic. Mike was trying very hard not to be horrified, because she hadn’t locked it in place. It looked crooked, and _not right_. Avi was stunned, and perhaps a touch jealous. Angel was trying not to panic, because she could feel that it wasn’t supposed to bow the way it was.  
  Shelly walked round the bed and carefully nudged her daughter-in-law’s elbow into its new slot. Angel immediately relaxed with an audible sigh.  
  “And that’s why I didn’t try it with the IV arm,” she said, her mouth twisted wryly. “Now that I’ve got that part, how do I undo it? We don’t need a nurse freaking out.”  
  Shelly gave her a Look. Angel sighed, closed her eyes again. She Looked for the little latch, squinted at it as though that would somehow help her understand how it worked.  
  Shelly turned her arm sideways, and she Saw how a… diagonal flex..? Might pop it out so she could… She’d used centrifugal force to whip it out, like a cane. How did she… _Do I push against the wall--?_ It was crude, and painful, but she could See that it was working.  
  Not fast enough, however. The door started to open--  
  Shelly grabbed her palm and thrust sharply up toward her shoulder. Angel yelped. The nurse’s aide came in to see her mother-in-law holding her wrist in a weird way.  
  “There, does that feel better?” she asked, quite as if nothing were amiss.  
  “Yes and no,” Angel said, rubbing her elbow.  
  “It should feel better soon. Good thing I know a few chiropractor tricks, isn’t it?”  
  Angel saw what she was doing. She nodded, rubbing her arm appreciatively. She couldn’t lie, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t let people believe the lie of another.  
  The aide came in to inspect the damage, casting suspicious looks at the amateur chiropractor. He couldn’t find anything wrong with any of the readings, or her arm, now that she was wholly human.  
  “If your heart is going to work that hard after OT, we may have to take you off of it until you’re in better shape.”  
  “I’m fine!” Angel protested.  
  “It was most likely the pain causing stress. You can see, after a minor adjustment, that it’s fine now.” Shelly raised her hands, palm up. “I was just trying to help.”  
  “You did help,” Angel said. “I feel much better now. Thank you.” She wasn’t lying. Being half-Shifted was extremely uncomfortable. It wasn’t her heart pumping blood to the further extremity that bothered her. It was the feeling of being half in one body, half in another. Being shoved back into the body she was born in was a vast relief, and it showed.  
  The aide glared at them, but Shelly was right. Her heart rate was back within a normal range, if a tad high, out of worry.  
  “If you have pain after your next session, let one of us know. I’m not saying you did anything wrong, ma’am, but we’re liable for everything that happens to her while she’s in our care. I’d appreciate it if you’d leave things to the professionals from now on.”  
  Shelly agreed to his terms, but Angel could sense a fire under the surface. She reached out and squeezed the older woman’s hand in silent support.  
  “While I’m here, I may as well get you some bone broth.”  
  Angel groaned. “Can’t I try some solid food? _Anything_ but that!”  
  The man scowled. “I doubt you want liver, and that’s the only thing that’s got the nutrients you need. Besides, we don’t know how your stomach will handle solid food.”  
  “What if we made mashed potatoes with bone broth? No, wait, then it’d take longer to get it down. I’d like _something_ solid, though. That broth doesn’t hold me for long.”  
  “You’re hungry?” he asked. Hunger was usually a good sign of recovery, and she knew it.  
  “Famished. Can’t I have something small, see if it stays down?” She was begging at this point, but she didn’t care. Her stomach was trying to gnaw its way through her skin.  
  “I’ll see what the doctor says.”  
  It was the best she could hope for. She choked down the bone broth when he brought it, hoping it was one of the last she’d have to drink.  
  When the aide seemed to be done coming and going, Avi smiled at his parents. “Didn’t I tell you she was a scrapper? I didn’t think you’d be able to do it right after OT,” he said to Angel. “I thought you’d get some mental stimulation, get your mind off being tired.”  
  “Yes, you did say she was tough. Thanks, by the way, for helping your mother.”  
  Angel blushed, having Mike refer to them as her parents so soon after the rushed wedding. “She did help,” was all she’d say.  
  “Even so, maybe the practicing should wait until you’re not being monitored anymore?”  
  “Probably for the best,” she agreed. “We’ve seen that I’ve got the general idea. Should be enough, for now.”  
  Shelly squeezed her hand once and released it. “You two should come out to the cabin. Maybe if you see how she does it, you’ll figure it out,” she said to her son.  
  Avi grinned. “First chance we get, you can bet we will!”  
  Angel wasn’t thrilled about the assumption that she’d agree, even though she would have. She had to remind herself that she was his Guardian, as well as his… wife. That word was going to take some getting used to.  
  The aide came back with snack options, most of which she couldn’t have. It was a harsh reminder of her limitations--one of which being the missing teeth she’d forgotten about, until now. Her new in-laws didn’t say anything about it, but she felt self-conscious. She resolved to find her partial dentures before they returned the next day.


	21. The L Word

If either of them had given it much thought, neither of them would have chosen to spend their wedding night in a hospital room. They would have preferred a nice, comfortable bed; perhaps a cozy dinner. It certainly wouldn’t have included needles, tubes, or horrible-smelling drinks. There would have been cake, instead of gluten-free cookies for her, and a guest tray for him.  
  The should-have-beens weighed more heavily on her than they did him. He trusted his mother and sister to craft the perfect wedding. Esther’s wedding had been lovely, so he had a frame of reference that she did not.  
  Angel brushed crumbs off of her hospital gown, trying and failing not to feel sad. She’d taken off the shawl, so she wouldn’t spill the awful bone broth on it, which left her sitting in a slightly soiled hospital gown of pale blue and grey. The ties dangled listlessly down her back, where his hand lightly brushed her shoulderblades. He could sense her disquiet, though the source wasn’t clear. He offered her support without asking what was wrong. If she’d been able to tell him, he would have heard her thoughts directly.  
  The were only two bright spots in their wedding day: feeding and changing the baby, who was able to stay awake longer than before; and falling asleep as a family. Menolly was tucked in the lee of her mother’s body, facing her father. He was again on the recliner, but they pushed the rail down between them, so they could hold hands around their daughter.  
  In a day full of bloodwork, bone broth, and doctor consults, that little bit of family life got them through. The doctor was impressed with her progress already, and optimistic that it would only be another week before she could go home.  
  His parents stayed for a couple of days, but they had to return home. They realized later that they never did say how they got there on such short notice, in the first place.  
  Things seemed to go well for a while, but he noticed that Angel didn't have the spark that he admired so much. She powered through OT like a champ, grimly determined to get on her feet faster than the doctor recommended.  
  He managed to draw her out a few times, make her laugh, but something was missing. It took three days for him to realize that she’d changed after they got married.  
  Whatever it was, it wasn't physical. She still responded the same to his kisses--though she hadn’t initiated a kiss since then, either. Whenever they weren’t taking care of their daughter, things seemed a bit strained between them. He couldn't figure out why.  
  What might’ve been worse was that Dan looked at him in an odd way that made him wish he could read everyone's mind. He couldn’t tell if the big man was disappointed in him, jealous, or angry. He got the impression he was falling short somewhere, only he didn’t know where he needed improvement.  
  Angel was glad of the too-brief visits, and not just because she thought he’d left forever. She’d vented to him one day over messenger while her… husband was sleeping (having charged her phone to reconnect with the world, including her family). He’d come to her the moment he was free. He was neither dominant nor possessive while Avi was in the room, he was simply supportive. If one didn’t know how to read a taciturn Minnesotan, they might think he was even friendly toward the younger man.  
  It bothered the gentle giant that only one of them had admitted their feelings--and only because she couldn't lie about them. In her own words, “He's been doing the proud dad thing, showing us the appropriate amount of affection, but... He's never said, or even _thought_ the ‘L’ word.  
  “The worst part is, I don't _expect_ him to say it. Not if he doesn't mean it. After all… Don’t get mad, but he still hasn't told his girlfriend, that I know of.”  
  The last sentence got to him, almost as much as the unrequited love that his love was suffering. He knew her pain intimately, because it tore him into the same size pieces.  
  She managed to keep the reason behind her pain hidden from her husband; the first bit of wall back in place. She wouldn’t worry him with something he couldn’t do anything about. She also wouldn’t guilt him into saying something he didn’t mean.  
  She was right that he didn’t know how he felt about her, but she was wrong about his girlfriend. He told her the second night after the wedding, while his wife was sleeping.

  He stepped out in the hall, and quickly decided that the family room would be better.  
  Their greetings were a bit stilted, which was understandable under the circumstances.  
  “So… Esther says the baby's sick?”  
  “Yeah, Angel and I are in the hospital with her now.”  
  “Angel… That's the one that's almost your size, right?”  
  “Y-yeah. We're pretty worried.” He’d almost forgotten the lie about Angel’s size changes.  
  “What about the other two?”  
  He thought quickly. “Whisper is patrolling the halls, Reaper is guarding the outside.”  
  “They really do care, don't they?”  
  “It's hard not to. She's… well, anything I say would be biased.”  
  They both chuckled, but it sounded forced.  
  “She is adorable.”  
  There was a long pause, where neither knew what to say.  
  “So… can they all become human, or is it just her?”  
  “I don't know. I didn't even know _she_ could, until the baby got sick.”  
  “I bet that was a shock.” She hesitated before asking, a bit to casually, “what, ah, what does she look like?”  
  “I know where this is going, and... I'd say you didn't need to be jealous, but…” He sighed, rested his head on the cool window. “I married Angel.”  
  “You married one of your guardian dragons, the _minute_ you found out she could turn into a woman?”  
  He couldn’t blame her for her reaction. “A woman who had my baby, so… yeah. It seemed like the right thing to do. Plus there's my career to think of...”  
  The silence was long, and full of tension.  
  “I want to be mad, but honestly, when your mom showed me… well, you know… I guess I saw it coming. I know you, how honorable you are. Just… oh, this is going to sound horrible, but… if it doesn't work out, you know I…” She didn't finish, because it did sound horrible.  
  “Yeah, I know. Thanks, but I kind of feel like I owe it to Menolly to try to make this work.”  
  “Of course you do.” She sounded exasperated, in a sort of endearing way.

  Now, here he was with his new wife, and yet, something wasn’t right. Everything seemed okay on the surface. They were bonding over their daughter, introducing her to the other kids and their Bonded humans whenever they had the time to drop in, but that indefinable  _ something _ was missing. The shadows he’d seen from day one were still in the back of her eyes, and he didn’t know how to banish them.


	22. Unspoken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one word he hasn't said, and she doesn't expect him to say to her.

“The problem isn't that I don't care. You know that better than anyone. The problem, if it could be called one, is that I care too much. I'm afraid to  _really_  let him in because if I did, and things… didn't work out... There wouldn't be enough of me left to scrape together into a human being.” Her voice cracked with the effort of keeping her emotions from the sleeping infant.  
   Dan rubbed her back, trying not to cry, himself.  
   “For now, I'm hanging back, holding part of myself in reserve; waiting to see how this goes on its own.”  
   “But if you don't nourish this fragile, growing thing, it'll wither and die.” Dan insisted.  
   “What do you expect me to do, jump in with both feet,  _hope_  he catches a woman he barely knows? And if he doesn't like what he caught, then what? If you knew how many times I've splattered on the windshield of life, you wouldn't ask it of me.”  
   “I know most of them.”  
   “Then don’t ask.” She slumped down in the bed, curled slightly toward him.  
   Avriel returned from the store with more baby supplies shortly after. He Felt her distress, muted though it was, and glanced at Dan. He was also visibly upset, but held his tongue.  
   "Did I interrupt something..?"  
   Dan snorted, but didn't answer.  
   "Just a difference of opinion. Did they have the flavors she likes?"  
   He wasn't buying it, but he'd go along with it, for the moment. He could always ask her about their conversation later. "All but the peas. That's a pretty popular flavor, so we'll have to wait 'til they get more in stock."  
   "You could always order a case," she chuckled. "She loves 'em so much, I doubt it'd go to waste."  
   There was an unexpected pause. Carefully, as though he were tiptoeing past a sleeping dragon, he said "We might not be here by the time it shipped."  
   "The doctor said I'd only be here another few days, but you can send it to my apartment, can't you?"  
   He put the jars of food in the diaper bag. There weren't as many as she thought there should be. Her hackles rose, metaphorically speaking. "We'll need to arrange a flight home as soon as you're released. I thought you knew that."  
   "I did  _not_  bloody well know that! You need to  _tell_  me things for me to know them!"  
   He met her eye, though it was difficult.  She was still being monitored, and he didn't want a nurse interrupting them. "You're both my Guardian, and my wife. Where did you think we'd live?" His tone was calm, rather than accusatory. She'd shown she could Shift, at least partially, which made her the dominant dragon. Subconsciously, that affected his posture.  
   She deflated. "I've been so busy getting better, I hadn't thought that far ahead."  
   "I know we've only been married five days, but... I hoped you'd get used to the idea of living with me by now." He kept as much of the hurt out of his voice as possible. His eyes were suspiciously shiny. "I don't know why you fight me, every step of the way."  
   "Because she loves you," Dan interrupted.  
   “That's what I don't understand. If she loves--”  
   “But you don't love her back.” He said, taking two big, surprisingly aggressive steps forward.  
   There was a shocked silence, in which Angel glared at Dan, unable to look at Avi. Eventually, she whispered “I don't expect you to. We hardly know each other, after all.”  
   Avi grew angry, or at least frustrated, because she was right. He liked what he'd seen of her. He hadn't lied on their wedding day. He wanted to keep her for himself, but love? He just didn't know yet. He'd only just met the woman behind the dragon. It made him doubly angry that she refused to even  _ask_  him to.  
   “If you'd let me in, show me who you really are under all that armor…”  
   “But that armor is  _part_  of her. She's the toughest woman I know. You've gotta earn her trust before she'll let you in. But once you're in…” Dan's eyes teared up a little, but he faced his usurper squarely. “She's beautiful, even when she's hurting… like she is now.”  
   “Tragically beautiful,” Angel snorted.  
   “It's true. There's so much pain, and it just made you kind.”  
   “I got that reference,” she chuckled weakly.  
   Avi looked between the two of them, and saw a quiet rapport that he envied. She didn't even look at Dan, but there was an undeniable lack of tension there.  
   “If you don't love her, there are plenty of other people who do.” His big, broad shoulders slumped a fraction, but that's all he'd give. “She. Chose.  _You_. It's not every day a dragon gives her heart away, so… so  _do_  something with it, dammit!”  
   Angel knew how rarely he swore. Her gut twisted at the emotions that caused it. She got out of bed and wobbled stubbornly toward her best friend, clinging to the IV pole for balance.  
   Dan saw that it was still plugged into the wall, so he met her halfway. He brushed Avi aside as easily as you'd swat a fly, just so she wouldn't tug at her IV.  
   As his wife hugged the giant, Avi saw what could be. He'd glimpsed it several times, but it took extreme, emotional moments for her to show him the unfettered kindness she so easily bestowed on this bear of a man.  
_:Did it ever occur to you that he had to earn it, too? I've known him for years, love. It took him months to get inside my armor.:  
_   The fact that she'd finally used a term of endearment was tainted by the former lover she was embracing.  
   If she could've kicked his shin, she would have. Thanks to the Bond, the thought sufficed. His shin ached out of nowhere.  
_:You're looking at a plant soaking up sunshine, and giving oxygen in return. Put that same plant in a pretty box indoors, where very little light reaches, and see what you get back.:  
_   He didn't quite get her meaning, so she tried again.  _:I merely reflect the love he's given back at the rest of the world. If none comes in, it's hard for me to release what little I have in reserve, y’know? My cup doesn't runneth over like yours. It needs refilling before I can give it away.:  
__:Then why don't you_ ask _for it?:  
__:I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO ASK!:_ She gripped Dan tighter for a few seconds, to compose herself. Love wasn't the only thing she'd absorbed. She'd also soaked up his frustrations. _  
_     _:Look, I get it. You don't know me. I don't really know you, either. I don't expect instant lovey dovey marital bliss. But you can't expect it, either. These things take time. Love at first sight is a myth.:  
__:So were dragons,:_ he growled.  
   Her legs instinctively tried to cross when the bass rumbled through her brain. If she hadn't been clinging to a mountain of man, she'd have crumpled. Instead, he lifted her into the bed as easily as if she were a house cat.  
   “That's enough activity for now. Rest a bit, will ya?” Dan kissed her forehead, just as his phone rang. They both sighed. He had to go back to work.


	23. Mercurial Dragon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It would take a lifetime to understand his dragon, but a lifetime is what he's got.

"We'll need to arrange shipping of my belongings, wherever they are. My cat..." She trailed off, eyes faintly blue. "Poor guy. He probably thinks I'm dead. We'll need to find where he is; see if it's better to leave him there, or if he'd do better with us."  
   While she was listing the material things that needed doing, she stared at her hands, wrists down. She wouldn't look at him, or her tattoos, which now made her think of him. She stared at the faint blue light on her hands, mildly fascinated. It would take some getting used to, seeing her emotions in such a tangible way. Still, it might help her understand her own state of mind better.  
   She glanced up at him, then back down. "If you're a dragon--which wouldn't surprise anyone," she rushed to add, "why don't your eyes glow like mine?"  
   There was a pause just long enough for her to look up again. She'd forgotten that he liked to wait until someone made eye contact before replying.  
   "My family is too far removed from our--" He stopped, massaged his neck in irritation. "Ancestor species," he finished, face pinched.  
   Her head cocked to one side. He wondered if it was a leftover trait from her dragonself. "What ancestor species?"  
   He made a choking motion with both hands on his own throat. "Can't say. It's against The Rules."  
   "Whose rules?"  
   He looked up. She knew by now what that meant.  
   A lightbulb went off in her head. "Oh, so the rumors are true about dragons and--" Just as his had, her throat closed up. Then she remembered she didn't have to use her voice, which was good, because her throat still ached.  _:Angels?:  
__:Yes, your name is your species. Well, sort of. Half species? I don't exactly know how it works. You were born human, made a Vessel, and then Crafted into a dragon, so...:  
__:And now my brain hurts. I thought the first dragons were theorized to be angel/human crossbreeds.:_ Her brows were knitting an entire baby blanket.  
_:I don't know if that makes you more or less of a purebred Celestial Dragon, as you called it. I don't know where the angel powers come from, honestly.:  
__:Hmm... Maybe Gabriel gave me some of his... essence, or something? Would that make him my dragon father?:_ Her entire face scrunched up.  _:This is making my head hurt, and my feelings confused. Can we switch to more concrete planning?:  
_   "So, who do we call to find out where your belongings are?" He asked aloud, winking where the nurse couldn't see, as he came to take her vitals.  
   "I guess we ask Dan, next time he visits. If he doesn't know, my sister is sure to."  
   He clearly wasn't thrilled to have to defer to her former lover, but he didn't say as much. He was likely trying to keep the peace as much as possible. She both liked and respected him for it. She wasn't overly fond of verbal conflict, herself. Come to think of it, she also didn't enjoy physical violence. She wondered how the angels got her to do it.  
   It wasn't that she was afraid to hit someone. She was more afraid of not being able to  _stop_ hitting them. She'd crafted an iron chain for her temper over the years, out of necessity. Would she hit them so hard they didn't get up?  
    _:I hate to point this out, but it's your job to make sure things don't get back up.:  
_   She looked up, eyes a faint yellow behind her irises. The green on yellow was the most draconic combination he'd seen yet. :Things, _sure, but I don't want to get in the habit of striking first, and asking questions later.:_ She glanced meaningfully at the nurse's back as he left.  
He cupped her face with one hand, the fingers skimming along the braid. "That's what I'm here for," he said with a sad smile.  
    _But not forever,_  she thought where she hoped he couldn't hear. She must've succeeded, because he looked confused at the change in her eyes. His other hand framed her face, thumbs massaging her temples.  
   "You're getting better at blocking, I see. What's going on in this complicated brain of yours that makes you so sad, I wonder?"  
   He saw the violet that filtered into her eyes, which puzzled him even further. He was only touching her face. Was she really that sensitive to touch? He glanced at the monitor, but the readings were normal.  
   Feeling puckish, she pressed a finger to the crease between his brows. The blue seeped away, as did the purple, without a clue where either came from.  
   Before he could press her, OT came in to put her through her paces, leaving him none the wiser.  
   She did everything the woman asked her to, and then some. The occupational therapist kept telling her she could take a break if she needed, but she never did. There was an occasional flicker of orange, but she often closed her eyes so he wouldn't see it. She'd forgotten that he could feel her pain, but he let her. They needed her in peak physical condition as soon as dragonically possible. A human body just wouldn't do, on their schedule.  
   He felt horrible, letting her push herself past the point he would have tapped out; but if he'd stepped in, she would be weaker for it. He _would_ have stopped her, if she'd been in any severe pain, but the therapists were adept at finding her limits. She shook with fatigue, but she never got to the point where he thought she would cause actual damage.  
   He was just grateful that the baby in his lap never so much as whimpered. It seemed they only shared emotional responses, not physical.   
   As for himself, the reason he was sitting with the baby was because  _his_  body couldn't handle what she was doing. He'd learned on the first day that if he wasn't sitting when they put her through the wringer, he'd be sitting five minutes later; whether or not he _wanted_ to be!  
   "Your mama's pretty strong, isn't she?" Her head sagged, chest heaved, but her limbs did what was asked of them. She didn't seem to hear him, but he felt a weary trickle of gratitude through the link.  
   "Strong enough to do a new exercise today, I think."  
   The groan wasn't anywhere the therapist or baby could hear, but he heard it. He nudged her with his mind, only intending to send positive vibes. What he  _actually_  did, without training or encouragement, was share a tiny bit of his own energy stores with her.


	24. Angel Eyes

Angel-blue eyes flashed a warning at him, but she couldn't scold him until later. She had to listen to the instructions she was being given. Once the therapist left, though, he was fair game.  
   "That can be dangerous, you know."  
   "What did I do now?" He hadn't Felt the transfer, so her tone threw him off. He'd been off-kilter since he saw her angel eyes. It was going to take a long time to get used to that.  
   Her face softened, then hardened again. She wanted to be gentle, but her warning was not to be taken lightly. "You..." Her eyes scanned things he couldn't see, fingers flicked in that familiar gesture that he still wasn't sure she consciously noted. "You shared your own energy-- _the energy you're using to hold our daughter--_ with me."  
   He was doubly shocked. Of course, he hadn't known what he'd done, or that it  _could_  be done accidentally. That knowledge warred with the equal surprise of hearing her call Menolly  _their_   daughter. Before, she was either his or hers; rarely, if ever, did she use a joint pronoun.  
   Angel snapped in front of his eyes to get his attention. "Unless you're specifically asked, or I'm  _somehow_  on the brink of death, don't  _ever_  do that again!  _Think!_ If you give too much, you can't walk. That means  _I've_  got to carry you, which makes us  _both_  vulnerable." That angel blue was back, brighter than before. "If anyone is going to be handing out energy, it'll be me, understand? I've got more to spare than you do."   
   Her fist was tangled in his beard for emphasis. He gently removed it and patted her knuckles, adjusted the 02 monitor. "You're forgetting that I'm a dragon, too. There might be a day when you get sick, and it's my turn to protect you." He smiled right into those bright eyes, difficult as it was. "That's marriage in a nutshell, sweetheart."  
   Her lashes fluttered, breathing stuttered. He glanced over her head at the jagged graph that spoke words she would not. When he met her gaze again, there was a faint, telltale pink highlight. Emboldened by both, he set his lips to hers, as light as a whisper.   
   She held out for three beats of his heart; which was impressive, given what was dancing along the link.   
   Even if they'd been at home, they wouldn't have been able to do much beyond kissing, because their daughter started tugging on her father's shirt and bouncing.  
   "Peeeeeeeeea!" she demanded.  
   They broke apart, laughing. "I told you she'd want peas," Angel chuckled. "I hope you've got some left, or there might be a storm brewin'."  
   He smiled down at the baby fondly. "I think that's just her word for food. She'll probably eat whatever we've got."  
   Angel got Menolly's attention and signed "food", eyebrows raised in question. She knew very well that she was hungry; she was trying to reinforce the sign for it.  
   Menolly nodded so hard she would've fallen, without her father's firm grip. Angel made the sign for "hungry", said the word, and thought it at her, simultaneously.  
   Big blue eyes blinked up at her when she was plunked in her lap. She rubbed her belly, just like Mama did, and was rewarded with raspberries in her neck. She giggled and squirmed while her Papa got food, a bib, and a spoon.  
  "Okay, let's see that pretty face so Daddy can feed it, hey?"  
   Angel was too tired to hold a spoon aloft, but she could use her stomach to brace the baby in the upright position (aided by the hospital bed), and keep an arm around her midsection.  
   Avi was none the worse for wear, so he did most of the work. Occasionally, he'd put a hand on her little tummy if she leaned too far forward. As he said, marriage was cooperation; one helping the other.  
   It was hard for her to relinquish control over anything, but when it came to their daughter, she accepted the help without complaint.  
   "You should probably order lunch when we're done," he reminded her.  
   "Oh yeah, food," she said with a wry twist of the lips. "Thanks for the reminder."  
   His eyes twinkled at her over the spoonful of green bean puree. He was being a dutiful husband, and a wonderful father, simultaneously. She didn't know what to do with the feelings that crowded the back of her throat and warmed her core, but they spilled from her in a bright pink light that was difficult to miss.   
   She closed her eyes, hugged the surge of emotion close. She'd always done that, closing her eyes when she was overwhelmed. It helped shut out the rest of the world, so she could focus better. When it was good things, she focused on them. When it was aggressive stimuli, she worked to tune it out.  
   He didn't know any of that, of course. What he saw was the purest show of love being squashed, hidden from him until it passed. He had to work equally hard to suppress the irritation he felt at being excluded from something so beautiful.  
   Her eyes opened, a tiny line between them. He couldn't hide his emotions from her as well as she could hide hers, which made him more irate. Her head cocked slightly to one side, a wordless query pinging across the link.  
   He shook his head slightly, and pulled one of her tricks. He looked at the baby, so she couldn't see his face anymore.  
   She snorted and reached for the phone to order lunch. She acquiesced when he curtly pointed out that she hadn't gotten a vegetable, without so much as a flicker of color rising to the fore. She chose a vegetable and placed the phone gently in its cradle. Just as gently, she handed him their daughter so she could use the restroom.   
   She couldn't read unformed thoughts, so she didn't know what set him off this time. She could, however, take care of basic bodily needs. They teach you to focus on what you can change, release what you can't, when you're in mental health programs. She'd been through her fair share, until she got properly diagnosed, so she had a wealth of coping skills to draw from. Someone who was more or less healthy only had what they learned from their parents. Ironically, she was better equipped to handle emotional stress than he was.  
   When she'd plugged the IV back in and sat down, she asked if he wanted to tell her what was wrong. He handed her the baby and picked up the spoon, ostensibly ignoring the question. She let him stew until the jar was empty.  
   "If we're going to make this work, we need to work on our communication." She delivered the movie line with more comedic lilt than the actor did, to draw him out with humor.  
   He picked up the baby wipes and began to clean their daughter's lunch from her little body. He was still quiet, but she could hear thoughts trying to form, so she allowed it.  
   "Why do you keep things from me? Good, bad, we're supposed to share everything." He glanced up, as if afraid to see her expression.  
   She nabbed a wipe to help, deliberately misunderstanding to give herself time to answer. "To an extent, healthy boundaries are necessary; particularly when one party is prone to codependency." She said the words slowly, carefully, afraid to make him angry. Old habits were hard to break.  
   He threw his wipe away with more force than it required. "That's not what you're doing. You're still shutting me out. I thought once you got your body back, you'd be more..."  
   "What,  _normal?_ Honey, I was never normal."   
   Her voice, husky and warm, made the endearment sound like the food it resembled: sweet, golden. His knees pressed tightly together under his daughter's legs.  
   "What brought this on, anyway? What did I do to shut--" He unconsciously thought the answer, which she caught mid-sentence. She laughed. "Seriously?  _That?_  Oh sweetie, I was trying to... I dunno, experience it more fully? Like a blind person hearing music better, I guess... Isn't that a good thing?"  
   The endearments were flowing now. He didn't know what to do with them all. He couldn't think of a reason she was suddenly so relaxed, until Menolly patted his hand.  _Ah, there's mommy's source of sunshine,_  he thought.   
   A little light flickered in his mind. She really meant what she said about giving what she got in return.  _He'd_  been the one putting her in a pretty box. Meanwhile, the baby was greeting them with love nearly every second she was awake.   
   He looked into the steady blue-grey eyes of his Angel. Understanding hovered in the air between them.  
   "It is a very pretty box," she said, lips twisted with suppressed humor.


	25. Red Light, Green Light

"I'll say again, I don't expect you to just start spontaneously radiating sunshine. So, instead of covering the same old ground, why don't we take a hike into unknown territory?"  
   "What?" he asked, a half smile hovering around his lips.  
   "Well, I keep saying we don't know each other. We're married now, so why don't we get to know each other properly?"  
   He sat at the end of her bed, baby happily pleating her mother's sheets on her knee between them. "Okay, I'm game. What did you have in mind?"  
   "We could play Never Have I Ever, or Truth or Dare. Maybe even Red Light Green Light, but... I'd suggest that wait until a certain someone falls asleep."  
  "I don't think you're up to running anyway," he chuckled.  
   "No, silly, not  _that_  version!" She was blushing, and not meeting his eye. "It's where you talk about things you absolutely love, or loathe, or don't care either way about."  
   He cupped her chin, lifted it so she had to look at him. "If it's so simple, why are you embarrassed?"  
   Her lashes swept down, then lifted as far as his nose. Her legs shifted under their daughter. "It usually refers to, ah... more intimate affairs, but it can be anything from music taste to foods," she rushed to add.  
   His hand dropped from her face. They both watched the baby for a while, uncomfortable silence broken only by the quiet beeping of machinery.  
   As usual, it was Angel who broke it. "So... how red is a salad?"  
   He laughed, she laughed, the baby gurgled happily. It broke the tension, and opened a real, honest conversation between them. For perhaps the first time in their relationship, they were getting to know each other. There were no constraints on their time, at least for that day. There were no attacks to interrupt them, no schedule to keep. They had as much time as they needed to properly get acquainted.  
   They found that their diets were vastly different, but they shared some musical tastes. They both loved the outdoors, and being active. They'd both wanted a family, though the desire arose at different ages. Their familial backgrounds were drastically different, which was what shaped them into the people they were.  
   She wept when she told him what happened to her children. He told her stories of her dragon children to cheer her up, but they were tainted by the knowledge of what kind of mother she'd been to them.  
   They talked about their childhoods, being bullied in school. The reasons were different, but the effect was similar. They both struggled with anxiety and self-doubt. She showed him her drawings, paintings, and crochet, which occupied the rest of the evening.  
   "So you could make her these booties?" he asked, pointing to a cute animal pair she'd made for her cousin's baby.  
   "If the pattern hasn't been lost, yes." She was quiet for so long, her phone screen went black. She was worrying about her drawings, dragon scarves, and other irreplaceable items, with an overtone of cat anxiety. Not knowing made her nervous. She'd lost so many things throughout the years; so many pets, and friends. She'd led a nomadic life, which went against her very nature. True, it made her more tolerant of change than most autistic people...  _Which wound up being a job requirement,_  she thought. It left a bitter taste in her mouth, until she forced herself to look at the perks of what had begun as a job.  
   She hugged her daughter tight, kissed her neck with a loud smack. Menolly Felt her sadness, so she didn't giggle like she usually did. She did her best to hug mama back, and so did papa.  
   Her husband leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead firmly, offering mute support. This once, the gesture affected him more than it did her. He was remembering the first time he'd done this very thing, though he didn't follow the memory past their embrace.  
   Angel had one arm around their daughter, the other around her husband, when her sister walked in the door.


	26. Little Big Sister

"And who's this I see in my sister's hospital bed?"  
   Angel jumped, handed him the baby, and struggled to be free of the sheets. He helped her untangle, and unplugged her IV from the wall. She moved faster than he'd seen to date, all but throwing herself into a hug.  
   "Oof! Okay, okay, it's good to see you too. Aww c'mon, don't cry, or you'll get me crying."  
   Angel did eventually back away, wiping her eyes with the hand that wasn't on the IV pole. "Sorry, I'm a bit emotional lately. I guess finding out you've been in a coma for half a friggin' year will do that."  
   "Finding you with a guy I don't know makes me a different kind emotional," she prompted.  
   "Oh yeah..." She blushed and couldn't think of anything to say.  
   He stepped forward, Menolly perched on his arm, staring at the newcomer. "Avi Kaplan, ma'am. Nice to meet you. We've actually been talking about your family this evening, so it's pretty good timing."  
   The second he said his name, her sister's eyes popped out. They darted between Angel and her Bonded, pale brows nearly in her hairline.  
   "Can I ask _why_ you've been talking about our family?" She liked to get straight to the point. It saved time.  
   He laced his fingers with his angel dragon's, lifted their joined hands where she could see Angel's rings.  
   "Uh, excuse me? Why am I just now finding out you're married, to  _him_ , of all people?!"  
   He tensed up, taking offense where there was none. Angel patted his hand with her free one.  
   "Sorry, not like that. I've heard a lot about you--" Angel blushed and looked away. "--But last I heard, she'd never so much as shaken your hand, and do I wanna know whose baby that is?"  
   Angel lifted the hand that should have had the monitor on it. She realized that about the same time the nurse came in to check on her.  
   She obediently got back in bed, put the blood pressure cuff and O2 monitor back on. The woman reminded her to order dinner before the kitchen closed. She used the excuse to avoid her sister's questions. This once, she let her husband handle things.  
   "I had our daughter while she was in the hospital. We were on tour, but as soon as we got stateside, I came back. We were going to get married sooner, but then she went into a coma--"  
   "And how, exactly, do you have a baby?" Though younger, she was taller than Angel, and she stood straight enough to utilize every inch she had to stare him down.  
   "In vitro," he said smoothly. It was so close to the truth that Angel could have said it.  
   "But why, if you had the option, didn't you get married  _before_  going through all that?" Her sister was getting increasingly frustrated.  
   He chuckled and looked at his feet, buying time while his mind whirled. "I'm sure you know how stubborn your sister is."  
   She scowled. "What's that got to do with anything?"  
   "She wouldn't marry me, knowing her... limitations, until I proved it was possible." His eyes went all soft and emotional, channeling actual arguments they'd had. "She didn't want me to sacrifice having a family for her."  
   The younger woman's hard shell cracked a little. She called her elder sister a pet name he'd never heard, walked to the bed, and hugged her tight.  
   "You're crazy, ya know that? I love you dearly, but you should've said yes the first time."  
   They all laughed, Angel blushed, and the tension eased away.  
   "So, do I have you to thank for her coming out of it?"   
   Angel's blush deepened. "It would seem so."  
   Her sister looked at the baby then, really looked. She didn't ask to hold an infant so young, but Angel knew that when Menolly was older, she'd be a great aunt. She'd play with her, teach her about the best geeky things, and generally be awesome.  
   She was so distracted by maternal, sisterly thoughts, she hadn't thought to keep her emotions calm. Most people couldn't see her dragon eyes anyway, so she hadn't deemed it necessary.  
   Her sister was looking between them, trying to figure out where her niece got the sparkly skin, when she saw the rosy tint to her eyes.   
   "That's new."  
   "Oh, right, I guess you'd be able to see that..." She didn't know how to explain it without actually explaining it. "I'd tell you what's up with that, but then I'd have to erase it from your memory. Sorry."  
   "You'd have to  _what?_  Since when can you even  _do_  that?"  
   Angel thought of a bluff that wasn't exactly a lie, and might lead Avi to bail her out. "You know how we have different biodads..."  
   "Hers wasn't exactly human," he finished for her.  
   "Bullshit," she scoffed.  
   Angel shrugged, moved the poles further from her bed, rolled the tension from her neck, and hugged herself until her wings popped out.  
    _"Whoa!_  When did _that_ become a thing?"  
   Angel worked them back into her skin before her dinner could arrive. "I found out not long after I woke up. Needless to say, it was a bit of a surprise."  
   Her sister tentatively touched her back. Angel obligingly wiggled her folded wings beneath the skin for her to feel.  
   "So the coma was like a cocoon or something?"  
   Angel laughed. "Maybe." She couldn't remember why she needed to be in a coma, so she couldn't say either way. It wasn't a lie, because she didn't know, and that was her answer.  
   "I can do more, but it gets the heart rate up, and I'm on a monitor, so..."  
   Her sister laughed. "Yeah, don't wanna freak out the normies. Dude, that's so  _cool!_  I'm actually kinda jealous."  
   "Speaking of normal people, I hear the dinner cart."  
   Avi and her sister cocked their heads, but couldn't hear what she did. She held up one finger, and a few seconds later, a tech came in with her tray. She accepted it with a smile far wider than usual.  
   The tech left, and her sister stared at her with wide eyes. "You're  _totally_  a superhero. Can I write a comic about you?"  
   "As long as you don't expect details, sure. Gotta keep it on the down-low; especially considering who I married."  
   The spouse in question was grinning behind her back. He liked the enthusiasm emanating from the younger woman. Technically, she was older than him, but also the younger sister.  _Great, I've got another older sister_ , he grumbled without heat.  
   : _Two more,:_  she reminded him. : _I'm not sure how I feel about being the eldest sister, married to the youngest man...:_  
   He turned the sound that gurgled from him into a cough.  
   "You okay, my dude?"  
   "I don't know."


	27. Love and Crochet

Her sister stayed for an hour, while she ate dinner and made a fuss over her daughter. She wrote down where Angel's belongings were, and promised to return her cat as soon as they were ready for him. She'd forgotten that her sister was listed as his alternate caregiver.  
   "When we figure out how we're getting my stuff to California, we'll tackle the whole cat situation," Angel said. She'd begun to droop with fatigue, though she stubbornly refused to admit it. She hadn't seen her sister in forever, and she was damned well going to stay awake for every minute.  
   Her sister wasn't fooled. "You do that. I'm staying in a hotel in town until you're released, but they don't allow cats, so he'll have to be sent from my place. I'm sure he misses you a lot. On that note, I'm going to let you get some rest. It was nice meeting you, man." She shook Avi's hand, hugged her sister, and left.  
   Avi let her drift off to sleep with the baby on her chest. Alone with his thoughts, they kept going back to what they'd talked about that day. Most relationships grew over months and years, sharing interests and experiences as they went. Theirs had gone from an uneasy working relationship with a third wheel, to a sort of pet/human interaction when she was a hatchling, to an even more uneasy bodyguard/client thing.  
   And then the children were born, and things got more complicated. Nothing about their lives together had been easy, or normal. Now she was human, more or less, and they were expected to make it work somehow.  
    _What was I thinking, asking for a human Bonded? I mean, I didn't know that's what would happen, but... At least when she was a dragon, nobody could see her. Well, hardly anyone could see her, but no one would question a dragon living with a human full-time. Now that she's human, I guess it's a good thing we're married, because otherwise, people would assume all sorts of things. Living together with a baby and no rings... People would think the worst.  
_ _:And what, precisely, is the worst case scenario there? That we're living in sin?:  
_ He jerked upright. "Sorry, I thought you were asleep."  
   She half stretched with her lower body. "Mm, sort of drifting."  
   "I didn't know you could hear any of that. It's just... things are really complicated right now."  
   She murmured assent.  
   "And I'm still confused about a lot of things."  
   She grunted, shifted into a more comfortable position.  
   "Like you being sad because I don't love you, but also not expecting me to."  
   She shrugged, eyes still closed to hide the pain at hearing him say that he didn't love her. "There's a difference between loving someone, and being in love with someone. You love family, but you're not in love with them." She waited to see if he would say that he loved her like a friend, but he was too busy processing what she said.  
   "Look, we've gone over this a dozen times, in a dozen different ways. Why don't we just forget the L word?"  
   " _Can_  you?"  
   Her eyes snapped open. "I can d--darned well try." Even though the baby was asleep, she didn't want to get in the habit of swearing.  
   He looked down at his steepled fingers. "If you could, you wouldn't be sad all the time."  
   "I'm not sad  _all_  the time," she retorted.  
   He gave her a Look.  
   "Really, I'm not. If I were, I couldn't say that I wasn't. Wow, that sentence hurt my head a little. It's just... bittersweet. It's everything I ever wanted, just... out of order. Well, except the dragon part. As long as I get to be a dragon, I don't care when in the relationship it happens."  
   Her tired brain latched on to the word "relationship". It was still weird, using that word with him. She idly pondered their ship name, then discarded it because it sounded like the name of some fantasy race. They had bigger concerns at the moment.  
   He chuckled.  
   She blushed, grumbling about boundaries into the blanket under the baby.  
   "Do those even exist between a husband and wife?" She could hear the smile she was pointedly not looking at.  
   "In a healthy marriage, yes. My mother once said 'You have to be able to stand on your own two feet before you get married.' Something like that. The point is, without healthy boundaries, you begin to lean on one another, until you're a pair of tilted flamingos. I've gone down that road once, and I swore it'd never happen again."  
   "Your mother is a wise woman."  
   "Sometimes."  
   He was silent for so long she was tempted to look at him.  
   "You don't get along with her, do you?"  
   Her sigh ruffled their daughter's fine hair. "We... play nice, to keep the peace. There's a lot of history, some of which you know. It's hard to come back from that, but I try to at least remain civil."  
   "Care to talk about what else is between you two?" He asked, leaning slightly forward.  
   She shook her head, braids rasping against the pillowcase. "Not while I'm being monitored." Her lips twisted. "Plus it'd just get me riled up, which would upset the baby."  
   He leaned back. "Best not," he reluctantly agreed.  
   As though she'd been summoned from slumber, Menolly stirred. Her diaper was wet. Angel made to sit up to take care of it, but her husband plucked the baby from her chest and laid her across the foot of the bed. The diaper bag was sitting there, she noticed with some surprise. She either didn't know, or didn't remember, that she wasn't the only one who could "hear" what Menolly needed. She was also too tired to remember to sign anything.  
   She lay there, enjoying the novelty of a man who not only offered to help, but seemed to enjoy the task.  
   He glanced her way, hand firmly on the baby. "You've never had help with your kids?"  
   "Not from my partner, no. Either inexperienced, or indifferent. I couldn't win--until now, it seems." She smiled across the bed, and was met with one from him.  
   "I don't think anyone would be surprised that you're a good father," she said, dancing around the topic of his fame, which made him uncomfortable sometimes.  
   "Just good?" he asked, brows raised. His eyes were pointed at the baby, but angled slightly her way.  
   "I dunno yet, do I? Besides, you did take her adragonback."  
   He started to point out that it was at her insistence, until he saw the mirth in her half-lidded eyes. "And just who  _was_  this dragon,  _hmm?_ " he teased back.  
   One dark brow and bare shoulder cocked up saucily. "Marriage is fifty-fifty," she said, paraphrasing what he'd said about feeding the baby.  
   "If my hands weren't full, young lady, I'd put you over my knee, and--"  
   "You say that like it's a bad thing." Her eyelashes batted at him coyly, until she realized what she'd just said, and to whom. Her head burrowed under the covers, mortified.  
   His laughter didn't help any.  
   "Is this a weird time to wish I had my crochet bag?" she asked, voice muffled by the blanket. "Clearly, I need something to do, instead of teasing you. It doesn't end well."  
   He laughed again. "If you're serious, I could see if Scott and Mitch are together."  
   Her head popped out, brows knitted.  
   "I forgot, you might not know that the kids can teleport."  
   "So, what, if they're together, it frees up a... dragon to get them? Good to know, but I can ask whoever's been paying for the storage unit."  
   "Oh."  
   "Relying on the kids too heavily could give us away." She blushed when she referred to their children, but forged on.  
   "Good point, as usual."  
   Her head tilted at an awkward angle, lying down as she was. "Am I so wise as a dragon?"  
   "Angel too. You have a knack for pointing out the most logical solutions."  
   "Huh..." That was all she could think of to say, and the last thing she said before dropping off to sleep for real.


	28. Dragon of Leisure

You could measure her recovery by how restless she grew. As her dragonself said, she was not a dragon of leisure.  
   "I just want to get out, stretch my legs, y'know?"  
   "Yeah, I get that. You'll be running circles around the car in no time, don't worry."  
   Her head cocked to the side. "Why would I run round the car..?"  
   He laughed at a memory her soul remembered, but she did not. "Because I wouldn't drive fast enough with the baby in the backseat."  
   She snorted. "Either you're telling me I can run faster than a car, or you're saying you drive slow."  
   He flushed. "I didn't want to speed through the frickin' desert with a baby on board!"  
   She stretched as best she could, trying to alleviate the restlessness. "I didn't think a car  _could_  drive on sand. Wait, why were we in the desert? I'm sorry, you're gonna have to catch me up on a lot here."  
   He gently dislodged their daughter's fist from his beard. "It was the only place we could think of where you could stretch your legs, but still keep an eye on us."  
   Her legs bicycled under the sheets a bit. "Makes sense, I s'pose."  
   He chuckled. "You 's'pose'? When did you go Minnesotan on me?"  
   "Hah! I've been Minnesotan longer than I've known of your existence. It just doesn't come out very often; probably because I've lived in a few different states in life, so it's just one of many accents warrin' aboot in m'head."  
   "Was one of those states in England?"  
   "Pfft. Naw, I'm just an anglophile, and part Irish to boot. Sometimes it just pops in for a syllable or two. And sometimes the South sneaks in, or the West coast." She shrugged and held it in a makeshift stretch. "I've been everywhere, man. Breathe the mountain... man air." Her eyes twinkled with mischief, even as a blush gently tinted her cheeks.  
   Avi found he liked this side of her. The imp who played with words, even if they made her uncomfortable.  
   "I miss the mountain air, man. Or fresh air, in general. Hey, d'you think we'll have time for a wee hike before we leave forever?" Her eyes pleaded with him, hands clasped at her breast. It did something to his heart, but he couldn't give her what she wanted.  
   "If you were full strength, I'd say yes," he said, reluctant to break her heart. "Besides, I'm sure we'll come back at some point. We always have Minnesota in the tour schedule."  
   Her face fell before he finished speaking. She was used to disappointment, had become adept at hearing it before it was said. "You'll go to the Cities, sure, but not here. And sure, there's hiking there somewhere, I've heard, but... it's not  _here_." She almost said it wasn't home, but home had changed so many times over the years, the word ceased to mean anything anymore.  
   His heart broke a little. She was right, they might never return to the home she'd known for... he didn't know how many years. They couldn't risk being attacked on the trail, with her at half strength. He'd become protective of her, ever since he laid eyes on her frail body, lying in a coma. Even knowing she could probably Shift, they couldn't know how fast, or how effectively. They would need every day in relative safety to get her back up to snuff. None of the kids were here to watch over them while they took a leisure stroll through the wilds of Minnesota, and she'd already said she wouldn't ask them for anything but an emergency.  
   She sat, slumped, in her little island of tangled sheets, and there was little he could do to console her.  
   "You haven't met the redwoods yet," he tried. "It's not what you're used to, but maybe that's a good thing? Maybe it's an adventure, just waiting for you to be strong enough for it."  
   Her shoulders hunched a little, the dragon in her taking offense at the implication of weakness that the human in her knew to be there. He thought he saw a flash of angel blue in her eye, but it was hard to tell at this angle.  
   Always one to try to find the silver lining, Angel murmured "I s'pose 'tis poetic to return to the land of my birth, eh?"  
   He perked up, having given up on keeping Menolly out of his hair. "You were born in California? I didn't know that. I guess, aside from what you've told me, I don't know a whole lot about your life, before..."  
   Her wings rustled beneath her skin, in a mimicry of the shrug he knew so well. Her spine rolled with it, the same as it used to. She was becoming more the Angel he knew, with every passing day. For some reason, that made him nervous.  
   "I don't remember it, you know. Too young. Didn't seem important to mention, 'til now."  
   It was sad, what a lack of fresh air did to her. She was getting stronger every day, but also wilting under the artificial lights.  
   Piercing blue eyes, calm and detached, met his unexpectedly. "What d'ye expect from a dragon? Don't you do better out in the woods? Doesn't it recharge your bat'ries, as well? Must be a dragon thing." A faint puzzled expression ghosted across her face. "If so, was I a dragon before I was a dragon? Or is that merely a coincidence? Was it a requirement? I have so many questions..."  
   She was an odd one, for sure. One moment she was sad, the next a wan fey. What would she be in the next moment? The warm, maternal Angel, or the conflicted mass of emotion? He never knew what to expect. He couldn't decide whether it was exciting or terrifying.  
   She would be the laughing, unconsciously sexy minx, it seemed. "You're thinkin' of a dragon again, and tryin' to put 'er in a human box. It won't work, ye know." Her eyes twinkled a mischievous green.  
   Light as a feather, she hopped from the bed and nabbed her IV pole. "Unplug me, will ye? I'm for a walk."  
   "Won't that alert the nurse if you're unplugged?"  
   "Ach, they'll see me walkin' the halls and know what's up."  
   Full of reservations, he reached for the plug, juggling their daughter, when OT came in.  
   "Well, looks like I got here just in time."  
   Instead of the groans she usually met them with, she merely sat back on the side of the bed, legs crossed. "It's not a walk, but it'll do."  
   "Getting restless, are we?"  
   "Yessir, I most certainly am! I'd love a bit of fresh air, but this'll do, I s'pose."  
   "Nice to have someone who's happy to see me. Let's see how long that lasts," the man challenged.  
   "Yes, let's." Her eyes, still green, sparked an answering challenge.  _Just see if you can break me today!_


End file.
